Ringside - Lost Days

While Zooey Deschannel's musical side project She & Him sure gets tons of coverage, there's another "celerity" band worthy of praise: Ringside. Composed of guitarist, keyboardist, and vocalist Scott Thomas and actor Balthazar Getty providing beats and producing. Lost Days released this past week is the follow up to their 2005 self-titled debut. It combines the borrowed genre elements used on the debut with a new, more rugged sound. That's not to say the whole album is full of rough-and-tumble rock songs, there's also slower, more introspective tracks like "Stay" and "Love in the Asylum". All throughout the album there's this perfect balance achieved between the beats and the other musical content, no doubt due to the two artists' long collaboration with each other. It's catchy without being fake, and noisy without being irritating: pop rock done oh so right.

Lost Days features numerous guest appearances like Ben Harper on "Lost Days", Joaquin and sister Rain Phoenix on backing vocals, and Weezer's Brian Bell to name a few. It's the product of much labor and love, financed and released by the band itself on their own imprint Ringside, Inc. Here's hoping it's not another six years until they release their next album but if that's what it takes for them to produce another album of this quality, then so be it. Get a taste of Ringside with the video for soft rocking lead track/single "Lost Days" featuring Ben Harper:


If you like what you hear, you can give them whole album a listen and buy it at their Bandcamp here.