I thought I was done with shows for 2005, but a quiet night and an opportunity to see a friend and former bandmate play led me to Rancho Relaxo for one more bout of live music before the calendar expired. My involvement with Lake Holiday pretty much ended over a year ago, but singer/songwriter Brad Davis has been carrying on under the name in both band and solo formats. Last night it was just him with the acoustic guitar, playing old and new songs. I hadn’t seen him play since the last time I was onstage with him, so I was pleasantly surprised to see how much he’s improved as a live performer – more comfortable, confident and just plain sounding better than I recall. The songs sounded really good, too. He played a number of selections from his/our album, This Is How We Say Goodbye, which has been in process for, um, a couple years now. I’ve taken to calling it Chinese Democracy. But at the moment, it looks as though it’ll be out in late Winter/early Spring of ’06, so here’s hoping. I’d really like to hear it. And tangentially, it was quite weird/neat to click over to My Old Kentucky Blog this week and see my own mug and a writeup on Lake Holiday.

The only other act I stayed to see was The Coast, whose name was familiar to me because they were on the bill for the Ukula Bright Lights festival back in November, though I didn’t catch their set. After hearing them last night, I’m not surprised they were on that bill – their sound would have been a natural fit for that distinctly Brit-friendly lineup. The most obvious touchstone would be mid-era New Order (post-Movement, pre-Technique), and judging from their cover of “Face Up”, they know it. What’s impressive is that they manage to pay sonic homage without any of New Order’s trademark sounds – almost no synths, just effected guitars, mostly non-Hooky bass and stripped down drums. Not even any Anglo affectations on the vocals, which were still Sumner-esque but a little raspier. But wholly organic. What they do cop is the upbeat, shimmering pop music that could get folks dancing without a single disco hi-hat. Overall, I found them fresh and impressive, and considering they managed to nearly pack a bar three days after Christmas, I’m not the only one. I was under the impression that an official release of some sort was forthcoming in the near future – I’d like to check that out. In the meantime, there’s some audio on their MySpace page, and a handfull of photos from the show here.

The AV Club compiles a most essential year-end list, tallying up the least-essential releases of 2005. The Toronto weeklies have realized 2005 is over, so both eye and NOW have their year-end summaries up. DoCopenhagen offers up their top 50 videos of 2005, all with linkage. Now are these really their 50 best videos or just the 50 best they could find online? Who cares, it’s awesome. Via Brooklynvegan.

JAM! lists off their years best music interview quotes, with a special focus on Oasis’ Noel Gallagher’s Live 8 rant. I like how it’s acceptable to wrtie “fookin” in a newspaper.

Yay to myself and Zoilus for making eye‘s list of top music blogs for 2005. I don’t know who those other jokers are.

Creator Rob Thomas answers Veronica Mars season two questions for TV Guide. I am under the impression that VM is doing alright in terms of ratings this year – is this correct? It would be so nice for one of the very few shows I watch to not be on the cancellation bubble for a change. Besides 24, anyway. Link via Soaring With Eagles.

np – Spiritualized / The Complete Works Volume 2

I made an inquiry back in August about Edinburgh’s Zephyrs, tantalized by a description I’d read somewhere about them being described as “the epic grandeur of Mogwai with the country-rock of Gram Parsons“. I subsequently acquired their second album When the Sky Comes Down It Comes Down on Your Head and was, frankly, a little disappointed that it wasn’t an epic post-rock record featuring pedal steel guitars (though apparently Mogwai have incorporated some of that on their new one Mr Beast…).

I found that When The Sky… sounded like a less-focused, even gentler Mojave 3 (if you can imagine that), a comparison helped out by Rachel Goswell’s contributing vocals to one track. Oddly, if there’s a Mogwai comparison to be made, it’s not in thundering quiet-loud dynamics but in the low-key vocals of Stuart Nicols, whose delivery reminds me of another Stuart – he of the Brathwaite persuasion. So as I said, I was initially disappointed because of unrealistic expectations on my part, but have grown quite fond of its laid-backness and general prettiness – enough to want more. So thanks to ebay I was able to get a copy of their 2005 release Bright Yellow Flowers On A Dark Double Bed in my mailbox just before the holidays arrived.

Two albums on from When The Sky…, the recipe hasn’t changed much, but the presentation has. The production is much drier and has a more “live” sound, which plays down the spacier vibe and plays up the folkiness – there’s even a couple of numbers that could be considered “rocking”, at least relative to the rest of the album. But overall, like its predecessor, it’s mostly quite pretty but a bit of a grower and less sonically interesting. They conventiently provide an easy point of comparison between the two records by including When The Sky’s “Stargazer” as a hidden track, re-recorded in the same style as the rest of the album. I don’t have mp3s of either to post, but their video for the song, circa the original version, is online and really quite beautiful. There’s also a live version “Lacua Head” from their 2003 album A Year To The Day (which I’m in the process of hunting down) that actually does have some of that post-rock vibe I was looking for, and Epitonic has a track from their 2002 EP The Love That Will Guide You Back Home available for download. There’s also a short film documenting the making of Bright Yellow Flowers called “The making of So Called Beau”, which I haven’t watched and thus can’t really comment on. But it’s there.

Video: The Zephyrs – “Stargazer” (MOV)
MP3: The Zephyrs – “Lacuna Head” (live)
MP3: The Zephyrs – “Obeyessekere”

But yes. The Zephyrs. They’re aptly named – the word means “a light breeze” – but quite nice even if not especially weighty.

Billboard talks The Believer with Rhett Miller. His second solo effort is out February 18.

Tom Verlaine talks to Guitar Player, but not about Television. Still, anytime you’ve got Verlaine talking shop, it’s worth a link.

The New York Times looks at how the internet has helped out the independent record label.

This is why I love Goldenfiddle.

Did you know the jive talking dudes from Airplane! had their own website? Well they do. And The Toronto Star has an interview with them.

np – Sarah Harmer / I’m A Mountain

Canadian music rag year-end lists! JAM! likes My Morning Jacket (who are giving away burned copies of Z to anyone who got rootkitted), Exclaim! has their best of the year lists online, as does Chart who also give their writers some (virtual) column inches. And though not Canadian, PopMatters wraps up the year in Canadian rock. Our own feature! How sweet. And tangentially, The London Free Press looks at how and why 2005 was so good to Canadian indie music.

And more lists – Junkmedia and CMJ have their year-end lists up, bloggers From Blown Speakers, Drive Blind (Ride-monikered blogs represent!), Muzzle Of Bees and Geekent have posted their picks, Joe from Dirty On Purpose runs off his faves of ’05, ye olde Stereogum has said his peace and Largehearted Boy rounded up his top music DVDs of 2005 last week.

It may not seem like it, but the season of lists is winding down, and Angryrobot couldn’t be happier. He makes an interesting point about the homogeneity of everyones choices in the internet and blogopolis in particular, though I can’t say I’m in agreement. Yeah, there were a lot of the same picks on a lot of the lists, but to me all that says more that folks who run indie blogs have similar tastes and that the common albums were of genuine quality. The overlap is simply a result of everyone’s radar being that much broader now – what might have taken months or years to spread from a local scene to (inter)national profile now takes just a single well-placed online review or blog post. There really aren’t any secrets out there. I know I assembled my list without a thought to what everyone else was doing, and would expect/hope that everyone else did as well. While I fully support anyone’s efforts to be more adventurous in what they listen to, it should be out of genuine curiosity and a desire to hear something new – not as a reaction to others, or a desire to be different.

However, I will acknowledge a genuine downside to the widespread concensus of what was good this year – I’ve already heard it all. Just as there were no surprises on my list, there really weren’t any on anyone’s lists. Yeah, you could play with and debate the rankings and whatnot, but I didn’t find anything really came out of left field to pique my curiosity and the net result is that I’ve probably already got all the ’05 releases that I’m going to (at least that I can see right now – ask me again in a year). My shopping list is incredibly short right now, and even shorter now that my Boxing Day shopping is mostly complete, and looks to remain that way through the rest of the Winter as the 2006 new release schedule doesn’t really pick up in volume till February.

But speaking of Boxing Day, my pick ups yesterday were as follows – Fountains Of Wayne’s Out-Of-State Plates, Sarah Harmer’s I’m A Mountain, Seu Jorge’s The Life Aquatic Studio Sessions, Jens Lekman’s Oh You’re So Silent Jens, The Mendoza Line’s Full Of Light And Full Of Fire and The National’s self-titled debut. And my LP collection grew by David Bowie’s Aladdin Sane and Scary Monsters, a $2 copy of Elvis Costello’s King Of America and Crooked Fingers’ Dignity & Shame. Bonus tracks! I also loaded up on the Fables trade paperbacks, a series it took me a little while to warm to but am now very much enjoying.

Mercifully, what I didn’t get is shot in the face. I was right at that corner about an hour previous to the shootings, and it’s just a few blocks from my place. That something like this would happen at maybe the busiest intersection in Toronto on a Saturday afternoon, packed with shoppers, is really unnerving. I swear, this used to be such a nice quiet town.

np – Fountains Of Wayne / Out-Of-State Plates

You can always count on Stereogum to take the year-end poll to simultaneously sexy and silly extremes. Witness his “indie hottie of 2005 (female)” poll. Not surprisingly, Jenny Lewis takes the title, followed by Feist, Maya Arulpragasm (aka M.I.A.), Neko Case and Metric’s Emily Haines. Just goes to show – Canadian (and honourary Canadian) women rule. Me, I was one of four who voted for Gemma Hayes (Girl with a Telecaster – what can I say?), though I am flabbergasted that Ambrosia Parsley of Shivaree was shut out. Come on). Madness.

And lest anyone pull out the “sexism” pointing stick, may I direct you to the Via Chicago message boards, where the Rock Star Boyfriends thread clocks in at a mind-boggling 42 pages while the Rock Star Girlfriends thread is only a paltry 25 pages long, and I daresay there’s far more male VC-ers than female. I also think I can safely say that considering the proportion of men to women making music in indie circles (which, granted, seems far more balanced than in mainstream rock), (straight) female fans have a much deeper pool of celebrity crush prospects than (straight) guys. Though I can’t help noticing Scott Stereogum didn’t conduct an “indie hottie of 2005 (male)” poll …

And though she may only be #4 on Stereogum’s list (but #1 for Playboy), I have more new for Ms Neko Case – an electronic press kit in WMV format for Fox Confessor Brings The Flood with some nice behind-the-scenes footage and a musical sneak preview (via For The Records). And thanks to Erika for doing a little more sleuthing about that twang-tacular show going on at what looks like Lee’s Palace on February 3 and 4. The folks at Bloodshot have clarified that a bit, and are saying those will be shows for a forthcoming live Sadies album featuring Jon Langford, Ronnie Hawkins and Neko. More details are forthcoming, but that should be one to circle on the ol’ calendar.

If they only had a higher profile, Daylight’s For The Birds’ Claudia Deheza sure would have garnered a few votes, and if there’s any justice songs like “For Now”, freshly posted on their MySpace page, will get them the attention they deserve. The song is stunning.

And that’s enough ogling for one day.

So it’s Boxing Day, which for those not in the Commonwealth is like our day after Thanksgiving – a non-stop orgy of consumerism and excess. I’ll be doing my part in hastening the decline and fall of western civilization by indulging in the CD, LP and DVD purchases that I’ve been putting off for the last little while. Actually, there’s not that much I plan on getting, but it’s the thought that counts, right?

np – Shivaree / Who’s Got Trouble?

Thanks to the Perry Bible Fellowship for providing my new favourite Christmas image ever – Christmas Cards.

Merry Christmas – everyone else has been posting seasonal mp3s so I’m following suit with a bonus batch of Christmas covers. Well, some covers – traditional songs don’t really count, do they? Anyway, off we go.

I can’t preface this Feist track any better than John Sakamoto did a few weeks ago when he featured it in his Anti Hit-List:

“Originally a 16th-century hymn, this carol has gone through several major iterations, and Feist has chosen here to limit herself to what are arguably the two least overtly religious verses. Regardless, the cadence of the lyrics makes this a challenge to sing, yet she makes it seem as natural as breathing. Part of a rare Best Buy promotional CD in the U.S., it cries out to be heard by one and all.”

MP3: Feist – “Lo, How A Rose E’re Blooming”

In 1992, The Wedding Present took on the record-setting task of releasing a 7″ single every month for an entire year. The a-side of each was an original tune, the b-side a cover. For their final Christmas single, they chose Elton John’s “Step Into Christmas”.

MP3: The Wedding Present – “Step Into Christmas”

Maybe This Christmas Tree was a holiday album put out by Nettwerk last year to benefit the Marine Toys For Tots Foundation. The whole album is Christmas covers, one of which is Ivy presenting a lovely reworking of Vince Guaraldi’s “Christmas Time Is Here”.

MP3: Ivy – “Christmas Time Is Here”

Finally, thanks to Bradley’s Almanac for this one. Technically, “Frosty The Snowman” isn’t a Christmas song – it’s more just a Winter song. But really, who sings after Christmas is over. Crazy people, that’s who. So I’ll post this Cocteau Twins cover taken from their Snow EP now, or else I’ll have to sit on it for another year. And who knows what could happen in a year? The world could blow up. And then you’d NEVER get to hear Liz Fraser sing in English. And that’s no way to live. Or die. I forget what I was saying.

MP3: The Cocteau Twins – “Frosty The Snowman”

And for more Christmas covers, check out Copy, Right?. My Mean Magpie has also posted a nice mix… actually, pretty much every blog out there has posted or linked some Christmas MP3 mix – linking to them all would be futile (and as of today, pointless), so if you really want more holiday tunes, go to Technorati and swing a stick.

Have a good day.

np – Wheat / Medeiros