Willamette Week
Buy: Discogs | Stream
The second in a series by Willamette Week’s Local Cut section – this is the first one that I’ve actually held in my hands. Only available in Portland and (briefly) online, the Another Grey Christmas series compiles local Portland bands doing both originals and covers… as so many other cities do. What Portland has in their favor though… is that it’s Portland. They’ve got a bunch of great bands just chilling out, waiting to record something amazing.
There are some solid tunes on this disc, with the perfectly passible indie-folk rendition of “Winter Wonderland” by A Weather, a stripped down “Silver Bells” by Run on Sentence with Mike Midlo, and a delicate “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” by Laura Gibson. There are some good originals here too – Future Historians‘ “Family Tree” is a darker take on the holiday season, and the lyrics have a wonderful sense of reality to them – something you don’t normally get from a Christmas song.
The best song on the disc is Dolorean’s cover of the Dolly Parton classic, “Hard Candy Christmas.” Slow, sparse and haunting at times – this is not your mother’s “Hard Candy Christmas.” And best of all… they posted it on their website for download.
Definitely check out the rest of the series… but be forewarned, they do not let you BUY anything but vol. 4 & 5. I had to call a boutique in Portland to get ahold of #2… actually purchased their in-store play copy. And I’ve never seen one go up on eBay either.
BOTTOM LINE: Some solid classics are covered, with one strong original. 3.6/5
Christmas Underground 
Well, color me embarassed. I have Volume 1 (hard copy). Boughy it as soon as it came out. Love it to death. It never even occurred to me they would make another one–let alone several. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Physical copies are crazy hard to come by… you’ve got a little piece of gold there!