Bennett Coast: Where Are You Going? Tour | Globe Hall | Summer Guide, Singer-Songwriter | Denver Westword

Who is Bennett Coast? A filmmaker who also happens to be a songwriter. A songwriter who also happens to be a filmmaker. Spike Jonze if he grew up in the age of Frank Ocean’s “Blonde.” A Gen Z Ryan McGinley who designs his own merch. The Gallagher Brothers if the first movie they fell in love with was Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life.” Los Angeles-based Coast is all of the above. A relentlessly talented, ambitious creative who does it all.

On his debut EP, Where Are You Going?, 22-year-old Coast lets us in on a little of the mystery. Like his work as a visual artist, Coast’s music is a reflection of his surroundings and his youth. Vast vistas, grassy hills, the blue of the sea. Boys fighting in parking lots. A first kiss with someone you end up falling really, really in love with. All of it is deeply personal and emotional. The cascade of drum machines on “Driver” segues into fuzzy guitars, and Coast’s vocals oscillate from the staccato of a rap to something more languid. In the song’s video, Coast lights a cigarette, gets in a car, and begins a journey. What unfolds is a fast-paced energy of unfolding moments, a controlled chaos all centered around a mantra of work, life, and sleep. A bright red sports car does doughnuts. A naked woman jumps into a pool. A police officer kisses his wife while her lover crawls out the window. Coast works in an office cubicle and pulls the strings.

Much of Coast’s art is like that: it’s not easily categorized, it’s about coming, going, catharsis. He’s reaching for the roots, the basic harmonies of the human experience. It makes sense: Coast is an introspective person by nature. Someone who grew up in the Bay Area suburbs and never quite fit in, and got into a few fights along the way. Someone who tried film school but was making videos by age seven. Where Are You Going? is a reflection of all that. It’s a story about growing up, fitting in, not fitting in, being who you think others want you to be, only to end up being yourself. It’s about watching your world expand and get huge. One minute you’re driving around your small town, the next you’re in college, figuring out who you are and what to hold on to.

For Coast, music is an extension of all his other artistic practices, all interconnected, incredibly symbiotic. Coast grows, sinks into his seat, molds the aches and sighs into a substance worth sharing – the result is something like an anchor, a pin to drop into a time in your life.