Editor's note: If you grew up in South Florida, you've lived a delightfully half-baked existence. You've definitely smoked the stickiest crippy and the worst Jamaican schwag. County Grind got all stoned and thought, why not ask these toasty South Florida musicians to give us a taste of their favorite pot-inspired songs in preparation for 420? This Chronic Cover series introduces you to both songs about weed and local talents. For the full list, click here.
The Cost's bassist Nathan Molina gave me a particularly burnoutesque response when I asked the Miami band last November a very innocuous question during an interview.
This was me: Let's say you put out an album making the music you make now. What do you think people would be doing at home while listening to it?
Nathan: Smoking.
Amid a barrage of very young garage-rock acts blowing up eardrums around South Florida, the Cost's originality is hard to overlook. Singer Manny Roman, influenced clearly by the Cure and the delicious misery of 1990s indie rock, it seems to me, steers the direction of their sound. That sound is all the things we love. It's all emotional, it's dark, it's a little messy. It also lends itself just enough to the pop sensibility that keeps you pressing play, again and again. So when Roman chose to cover the Lemonheads, it was clear why this old bag enjoys the Cost so much. It's like he gets us old Converse-plaid-glasses-wearing indie nerds. He understands our musical needs.
Roman takes Dando's detached, chilled-out "My Drug Buddy," strips it of its '90s apathy, and injects it with the hopelessness and angst we were all actually feeling in 1992.
Grab your drug buddy and light up, little ones.
