Buddyhead’s Best & Worst Records of 2005 list is up finally (So is a tiny bit of Gossip as well), it was compiled by Aaron North, Tom Apostolopoulos, Josh Homme & myself.  I hope you dig it, but if you don’t then just know you’re totally a douche-drinker.  Plain and Simple.  While you’re reading away, you should listen to one of our "best picks"… The Gris Gris doing their little number, "Down With Jesus". Check out the crazy part at the end where they totally jam it out dude, shit rips like my bong.

(CLICK HERE TO READ BUDDYHEAD’S BEST & WORST RECORDS OF 2005)

(Download - "Down With Jesus")

Hey Dave Clifford… that Angel Hair stuff is still great, I felt a litle dorky after posting those tunes a while back to later learn you write for the blog too. Hahah.. anyway - I always liked this song title. The song is great too.

So, ladies and gents… another Angel Hair song for you to smash your head into stuff… but first I have a little story:

I remember in 1998 when Frodus was touring we would spent endless hours listening to Communion (by Whitley Streiber) read by Roddy McDowall (who was Cornelius in Planet Of The Apes in the 60s) and the Art Bell show. My obsession with Art Bell would mean that I would insist on doing all the late night drives and listen to Art Bell really loud and make the Frodiis a little angry. Anyhow, one night Nathan Burke and I were listening to the Communion book on tape and were hyperaware during our night drive. Suddenly we saw a beam of light from beyond a hill extending into the sky.. .our hearts stopped and mouths dropped wide open. Then as we approached the light was glaring at us and it was just a car with it’s high beams on and the mist causing a refraction. Anyhow.. it was awesome and that whole tour I was sad that I wasn’t abducted by aliens. Roddy’s voice was very soothing in that book on tape and I suggest everyone to listen to it at one point in their lives.

(DOWNLOAD "BEDROOM SCENE FROM COMMUNION")

(DOWNLOAD "THE BEAST MAN" .WAV - RODDY MCDOWELL AS CORNELIUS - PLANET OF THE APES)

I hadn’t heard (or even heard of) Kelly Stoltz until I saw that he was given four stars by my favorite monthly music magazine, Mojo.  Soon after reading some brit’s rant about how rad this dude is I stumbled across "Below The Branches" in the stack of cds that people send Buddyhead.  So, I figured I should check it out.  The verdict: pretty dang good.  It ain’t lighting my world on fire, but I’m really digging a few songs on here.  My favorite is the record’s first song, "Wave Goodbye", mainly cuz he’s singing about getting high.  I mean, who doesn’t like to get high?

(Download - "Wave Goodbye")

(Download - "The Sun Comes Through")

In my euro investigations and wandering on music networks I came across this track from a good friend which convinces me that Sweden is the Japan of Europe. New Wave in a Blondie/Devo/Kraftwerk/Björk kind of way and probably some other stuff that I can’t reference at the moment. Throw in some 8bit electronic sounds ala Commodore 64 and you get this nice weirdswede pop gem. I think Travis may hate this.. but I never know.. he likes weird stuff.

(Download - "Heartbeats")

I dunno, but I suspect that this type of post could be viewed as inappropriate nepotism or even self-aggrandizing boosterism. But regardless, I think it’s worth it if this stuff gets heard and it spurs his endeavor further… Coast Ghost is the nom-de-tune of Andrew Rothbard, former singer/keyboardist of Pleasure Forever and bassist/keyboardist of The VSS. I also played drums in those bands (if you want to call me out for promoting my own former bands, so be it), but I have nothing at stake in Coast Ghost, a project that Andy started as a 4-track-based solo acoustic thing during the miserable time we’d spent living in a small house in Portland writing the Pleasure Forever album Alter in 2002. They were bleak and trying times for us and the seething spirit of Andy’s own tempest is glaringly apparent in these great, albeit inchoate songs. At one point during a visit to Colorado, he paired up with multi-instrumentalist and longtime friend Jeb Bows (who also lent his violin mastery to the first two records by pre-Pleasure Forever incarnation SLAVES) for a live radio session in which he debuted a handful of new songs. The first track is a somber and sober waltz called "Candy Cane and Lemonade" that truly reminds me of everything that I love about Andy’s songwriting and lyrics — it’s simple and catchy like a nursery rhyme, but the words lovingly bespeak an ambivalence about the gray area between living and dying. More importantly, it reminds me of a time that I thought none of us would escape with our lives (and there are a few I know who didn’t) and that if somehow we’d be able to reclaim our innocence, it would cost us everything we had. The words themselves seem almost nonsensical and trite, but they evoke powerful images of deathly finality: "candy cane, lemonade and a sleep for a thousand years/Spend your last dime on a cigarette." The palate is cleansed, the chalkboard erased, the pockets emptied. The second song is an early version (with very different lyrics) of the song that later became "Czarina" by Pleasure Forever. In comparison, I really like the hushed desperation and restrained hostility of this version of the song much better. "This is my ghost town/ And if you think you’ll take it back…"
  Please bear in mind, the "official" Coast Ghost songs and recordings — which are far more twisted, esoteric and transcendent — have not yet been released, although Andy has certainly painstakingly worked them over repeatedly on his 4-track and in his mind. I know that at some point he plans to release an album, but nothing is clearly set in stone at this juncture. These recordings are not officially sanctioned by him, but I wanted to share these songs and I hope we can all expect further Coast Ghost outings in the near future.

(Download - "Candy Cane and Lemonade")

(Download - "Czarina")

If you don’t own BRMC’s "Howl" record yet, I strongly advise you go and pick that baby up.  It’s one of the better records I heard in 2005 (speaking of… YES, for Christ sakes our "Best and Worst Records of 2005" list will be up very soon, so stop emailing me 50 times a day asking when that shit is gonna be up… it’ll be up when we’re done dudes… take a chill pill) and they put on a real good live show as well.  I recently saw them play a pretty cool, all acoustic, set at Marko’s place, The Hotel Cafe.  "Whenever You’re Ready" isn’t on "Howl" (or anything else to my knowledge), it was made availible on their website for free from December 28th til January 1st.  If you missed out on that cuz you’re a poser… here it is.  They embark on a US tour starting February 5th and end up in LA at the Henry Fonda Theater for two nights, March 13th and 14th (I’ll be djing in between bands).  The only bummer is that you’re gonna have to sit through that pansy band Elefant (the singer has a fashion mullet if you don’t know what they’re all about) cuz they’re opening the show (double talkin’ JIVE is right).  At any rate, so far 2006 is kickin’ and like James Brown "I FEEL GOOD!"

(Download - "Whenever You’re Ready")

Lavender Diamond embodies that truly rare and often-hijacked notion called "art-rock" — in which ideas informed of a broader reach and range than a simple retro-revision of the prior decade’s pop culture adapt the forms of popular music in order to present a challenging, thought-provoking and esoteric distortion of the commonplace. That is a complicated way of saying that it sounds as much classic as it sounds definitive of a new era. Despite the increasingly tiresome freak-folk flag flying that has caught this Los Angeles quartet in its breeze, Lavender Diamond’s renaissance ballads are epic and simple, flowingly Baroque and transcendently surreal, gloriously melodic and monolithic. Its debut 4-song EP, The Calvary of Light is just about the best new release I’d heard all last year.

Vocalist Becky Stark’s cherubic voice and mantra-like lyrics simultaneously convey an innocence and cynicism, as if each song arose from the primordial murk in which words like "dream the kind of life that you will find/ the kind of love that lasts forever" take on an entirely new meaning. She sings with a wounded hope similar to Sandy Denny and the tarnished charm of Nico, while the band — guitarist Jeff Rosenberg (formerly of Tarentel and Young People), keyboardist Steve Gregoropolous and percussionist/visual artist Ron Rege Jr. — provide the perfect collision of Fairport Convention with the Velvet Underground.

Lavender Diamond has unfortunately been tagged as part of the freak-folk scene, and its recently released split single with Devendra Banhart’s backing band Queens of Sheba on the visionary Cold Sweat label (who are also rumored to be re-releasing the limited-release 4-song EP this spring) adds further beard-by-association. However, unlike the new grunge (sported by the myriad shaggy neo-hippy "Beardharts" you can spot on any casual stroll through Williamsburg or visit to the Little Joy in L.A.), Lavender Diamond’s music is much more chamber pop and neo-classical Wagnerian 21st Century psychedelic-opera than anything else. Regardless, I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before this band transcends such narrow definitions with its lush and intelligent songs.

(Download - "YouBrokeMyHeart")

(Download - "In Heaven There Is No Heat")

(Download - "Rise In the Springtime")