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Memphis psych-rock taco afficianados Spaceface are quickly building a reputation for their badass Christmas songs. 2018 saw Spaceface release two holiday tracks, their woozy psych rendition of “Christmas Time is Here,” as well as their collaboration with LABRYS (Penny of Broncho), “Single Star,” which was a highlight from Fowler VW presents A Blackwatch Christmas Vol. VIII: The Sounds of the Season. This year (so far), they are releasing a lathe-cut, limited to 68 copies, naughty psych-rock jam called “Xmas Party (Nice & Naughty).” This song is an orgy for the ears, with a groove that recalls the kind of party music that Grapes and Friends throw down, combined with the naughty voiceover styles of Ryan Lindsey (of Broncho). Sandwich this song within a playlist, and who knows what is gonna happen. There does not appear to be a digital download of this… yet.
Bottom Line: This groove should sustain you all for a good while!
Stafford, England’s Don’t Call Me Ishmael are big fans of Christmas. I’m honestly amazed that I had not discovered them until this year, as they have multiple Christmas EPs, with releases every year since 2015. I’ve got a lot to choose from, but the song I’m going to highlight is the beautiful, and powerful, “Mary and Joseph,” off of 2015’s Dark Christmas EP. What immediately caught me was this sensation that I’m hearing an amazing Billy Bragg Christmas song. I’ve got this live Billy Bragg record that has been in my CD changer (yes, I have one) for YEARS… I stress, YEARS, because it always seems to pop on when my soul needs it. “Mary and Joseph” scratches that same itch. No accompaniment, just two voices reminding us to be grateful for what we have at Christmas. I’m most certainly looking forward to their upcoming Christmas release slated for Monday, December 9th. Follow them on Facebook, their label on Bandcamp, etc, to be the first to hear it! And dig into those older tracks too!
Bottom Line: Powerful simplicity in the vein of Billy Bragg… which is high praise.
The Good Tidings are the musical accompaniment to the Brooklyn-based Christmas movie series, The Christmas Club. While I believe the movies have continued since 2005, the band has remained quiet since 2013. That final round of releases included the excellent John Cale cover, “A Child’s Christmas in Whales,” which I wrote about back in the day. To my surprise, two new tracks popped up today, one of which I found just delightful. I rarely feature covers of John Denver’s classic “Christmas for Cowboys” tune on here, as nearly all the covers sound the same. The Good Tidings have thrown out the old formula and plugged in the synths. The production is beautiful and oddly soothing, with some standout brass synth solos to boot. The Good Tidings are back, and they brought their best stuff with them.
Bottom Line: A cowboy Christmas, basking in the light of a synthetic moon – a contrast that Christmas Underground can cosign.
I don’t normally write about straight-up Christmas carols. This is generally a pretty secular Christmas music blog… and if you want Christmas carols, there are a million other places to listen to them. That said, every so often, a treatment just hits me. British Columbia’s Dariynn Silver released a version of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman” last year that deserves some notice. The vocal melodies are great – her pacing and the words she highlights are truly unique. However, it may be piano in the bridge that just got me. It was just beautiful, and frankly, I thought you might think so as well.
Bottom Line: Who would have thought it? A honest-to-goodness Christmas carol on Christmas Underground. I am full of surprises today.
GTFO. This song F*ING RULES. San Francisco’s (or is it, as Facebook states, Seattle’s) Virgin of the Birds has written the BEST Destroyer-yet-not-Destroyer Christmas song I have ever heard, and I am including the Destroyer Christmas songs in this calculation. From the fascinating lyrics (Brutalist doesn’t mean what you think it does / Hosanna wasn’t over when you wished it was / Kiss me on the mouth, it’s Christmas Eve / I have stars in my eyes, I have winter seeds), to the see-saw vocal melodies and guitar solos, this song is a breath of fresh air. Their description of the song is succinct and wonderful as well:
“Christmas in the Borough of our Birth” is a song about hope, lust and regret set during the holidays with references to midnight mass and a second-hand sighting of American character actor M. Emmett Walsh. Plus a righteous dude choir made up of Bart Cameron, Levi Fuller & the Library, Casey Ruff Music and Sam Russell & The Harborrats.”
This track is going to come out on Black Friday, but you can still jam to the stream until then. Of course… you can buy it anytime though!
EDIT: So… there was an earlier version of the song on the Home for the Holidays: A Christmas Songbook compilation, which came out in 2016. The earlier version feel closer to a demo version when compared with the 2019 version… I’m truly glad they revisited it.
Bottom Line: Thirty seconds in and I was grinning from ear-to-M*F*-ear. Why am I not saying the dirty words this morning? Fucking shit I’m slipping.
As we gear up for the Christmas season, I thought… what would be better than a New Year’s song? Hehe. My Christmas mix is a much more of a seasonal mix – I work in December, snow, New Year’s… I cast a wide net. A folk-pop duo from Los Angeles, Wood Hitch have blessed us with the first solid New Year’s song of the season, “Auld Lang Syne (Don’t Waste My Time).” The song is full of booze and regret, as every good NYE should be. They harmonize well together, with the rough edges of Brady Harris’ voice supporting the beautiful pipes of Rose Shawhan. I mean, try not to sit up straight that first moment that Rose’s vocals enter the song; she really has something. And with that, press play and drink up!
Bottom Line: Wood Hitch are serving the first, great pregame cocktail to our New Year’s party.
Francis Lung is an alternative pop artist from Manchester, England, whose debut album, A Dream is U (still available on limited pink vinyl, amongst other formats), came out earlier this year on the always-excellent label Memphis Industries. Francis snuck a fantastic 3-song Christmas release by me last year (which I HAD planned to post a review of soon) titled A Francis Lung Xmas EP, but he was not so lucky this year! I’ve got you, Francis Lung! “To Make Angels in Snow” is a beautiful, perfectly timed (3:02- I love a short Christmas song), an alternative pop song that harkens back to the best of indie-Christmas legends Pas/Cal. The instrumentation is glorious – clarinet, tenor sax, flute, bass clarinet and a baritone sax line that brings up all my RIYL-Ezra Furman feelings of love. A breath of fresh air indeed.
Bottom Line: This song does not leave any room for boredom – the vocal harmonies and instrumentation paint every corner of the canvas. Francis Lung has outdone himself this year. Can’t wait for next year’s (hint, hint, Francis Lung).
Continuing from earlier in the month… when we all enjoyed an extremely short song about the end of Halloween… I bring you a beautiful and somewhat disturbing song that takes place around Christmas. Meskerem Meesi is a singer/songwriter from Gent, Belgium, with a beautiful, beautiful folk voice. I say folk voice, because she does not sing songs that stretch her capabilities, as you might find in pop music, but it does contain that one quality that is most necessary: personality. Meskerem’s voice has a warmth that soothes, even when she’s singing about eyes and dead flies. “Charlemagne” is a fun little folk tale about (IMO) an ex who is going to extreme lengths to get attention. Why did I add that IMO? Because I asked Meskerem, and she says that the song just wrote itself and was very open to my interpretation. So, don’t assume my opinion is the “right” one – take your own stab at finding meaning in this song. Thus is the subjective beauty of art.
(Post has been edited to reflect the name that Meskerem Mees now performs under. I’d imagine “Messi” was hard to get search results on!)
EDIT: The original version of Charlemagne is gone from Soundcloud, but she has released it officially on her 2022 EP, Caesar.
Bottom Line: Meskerem’s voice draws me in on this one. The song’s imagery is quite odd for something that might end up on a Christmas mix, but isn’t that kind of awesome? Can’t you just picture your friends pausing for a second, wondering if what they heard was correct, then just losing themselves in the chorus anyway? Yeah… I sure can.
There is no perfect release schedule when it comes to Christmas music. SO MUCH comes out in such a SMALL AMOUNT OF TIME, that no artist can be sure that their song will have the time to break through the flurry of competing songs. Last year’s fantastic track by Johnathan Rice and Courtney Marie Andrews is a prime example of this problem. Here we have two notable artists collaborating on a fantastic song, and I didn’t hear a peep about it until stumbling upon it a few months ago. The song tells the story of immigrants trying to make a better life, but instead, get caught up in Trump’s child jails. You know, the kind of track to put next to “Santa Baby” on your mix.
Johnathan gave some context to the writing of this song on his Facebook page last December. You would think that after a year passed, things would be looking better… but alas, this story could have been written yesterday:
This song is a story I wrote with Jason Boesel and Courtney Marie Andrews. It’s about a child and his mother trying to make it to the other side of the border. Reasons beyond their control intervene, and they don’t make it. This song is my way of calling attention to the current humanitarian crisis taking place at our border with Mexico. Like many of you, I was devastated by the images in the press of mothers being gassed, of little children in cages sleeping on foil blankets. Believe me – as bad as those images are – the worst is yet to come if we do not act immediately.
A few months ago I traveled down to the U.S.-Mexico border with a group of like-minded people to learn more about the situation, and hear about how to help. I started writing this song on the bus ride home. It was recorded in LA a few weeks ago.
Johnathan finished his post with a pitch to donate to Al Otro Lado, whose border rights program “hosts know-your-rights training and legal orientation workshops in migrant shelters in Tijuana, Mexico, and provides direct legal representation to detained asylum seekers in Southern California.” So, if you are so inclined, you can donate here.
Bottom Line: The story is moving and Johnathan and Courtney’s voices blend beautifully. Should you want to add a little bit of humanity to a normally sugary-sweet holiday mix, look no further than this song.
You might think my Christmas music hunt is scientific – that I have specific terms and techniques that I use. In some ways, you are right. There is most definitely a place for an educated search. However, there is also a place for just clicking and clicking and clicking, going down the rabbit hole to see where it might lead. This time, it somehow lead me to somewhere familiar, and I discovered Shadowlark. The voice behind this band is Ellen Smith, previously of the much more folky Ellen and the Escapades. I would often check back in and see what they were up to, as I loved Ellen and the Escapades (they have been featured on CU before!). Yet somehow, time passed and I had completely missed this new project, the synth-heavy Shadowlark. To my surprise, they even released a Christmas song last year, “Christmas Time.” I listened… and it sounded quite familiar. The song is a rework of one of the final released recordings of Ellen and the Escapades, expanded from its stripped-back original with some more production and additional lyrics. There are qualities to both versions that I really love, and I would leave it to you to decide which one you prefer. They even released a video with an acoustic version, which is also quite good. Three versions to parse, to compare, to enjoy.
Bottom Line: I could listen to Ellen Smith sing Christmas songs all day long. Her originals are exquisite, and her covers are gorgeous. Should anyone ever come across her version of “Silent Night,” please do share.
LISTEN
EDIT: Ellen also posted her iPhone demo. Listen below.
