The real problem with the current state of indie music is that it’s dishonest: the vintage, low fidelity recording techniques of yesteryear coupled with a Spectoresque approach to songwriting leave an unnerving stench of pretension and contrived pedantics.

The best case scenario for Best Coast: after its sunkissed lo-fi debut, _Crazy for You_, and its letdown of a second LP, _The Only Place_, the band releases a forward-looking EP that can signal a shift towards more “honest” tunes — music that comes from a less awkward place than some poorly recorded Beach Boys B-side rip-offs.

To be as brief as possible, the title track is a top-notch The Jesus and Mary Chain impression, “This Lonely Morning” is alright, and “I Don’t Know How” is complete garbage. Everything else is rife with a sense of underachievement that makes the band’s past as a promising upstart group of young soundsmiths seem somewhat misguided.

Best Coast, and Bethany Cosentino especially, seem completely at ease with the fact that the group’s career as a band is progressing sideways. Always searching for that middling, time-tested, boring, unadventurous, timid, predictable, not bad but not very good sound, _Fade Away_ is really just another entry in a long line of underwhelming releases from a band that once showed so much potential.

_MOVE gives_ Fade Away _3 out of 5 stars._