Tag: 2022

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Corvair “I Believe in Christmas” (2022)

Self Released
Buy: Bandcamp

I don’t know if it is necessary to rehash who this wonderful band is, but for the uninitiated, here we go. Portland’s Corvair is a notable indiepop superduo, comprised of Brian Naubert (Ruston Mire, Tube Top, Pop Sickle, The Service Providers) and Heather Larimer (Eux Autres – who have an indie-classic Christmas EP). They’ve now released three wonderful, original Christmas songs in three years and have firmly planted their flag at the top of the indiepop Christmas charts. The dreamy new single, “I Believe in Christmas,” is certainly bound for receptive ears. The orchestration, the vocals, everything is delivered with a casual beauty that seeps into your brain. Everything is indeed beautiful here.

Bottom Line: I believe in Corvair. Thank god they’re finally here.

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Sunturns “New Snow” (2022)

EASY Records
Buy: Apple Music | Amazon MP3 | Amazon.uk MP3 | Amazon.de MP3 | Amazon.fr MP3

Want a little bit of hope? It can feel like an uphill climb, that is for sure. Thankfully, we have the return of Sunturns, one of the preeminent seasonal supergroups (there are more than one!!). Comprised of members of Monzano, Making Marks, Little Hands of Asphalt, Moddi, and Einar Stray Orchestra, they get together every year or so to record some beautiful, original Christmas music. This year’s release is the absolutely lovely “New Snow,” which features Sjur on vocals, as well as Michael Barrett Donovan on bass and violin, Lars Lundevall (of the deLillos) on guitar, as well as much of the Sunturns crew. The song begins by acknowledging the shit we have all just lived through, but the turn from “puke in the snow” towards the hope of the future is simply wonderful.

I’ve been hitting these blue notes
Now there’s puke in the new snow
I’ve been feeling so down low
These past few years.

I’ve been going through these phases
Where everything changes
and we felt like strangers
These past few years.

But it’s not supposed to be this way
We’re putting it on display
With the darkest observations
there in the light of day.

Here’s a rhetoric
I want you to stay.

Erased it all with a few strokes
Hopeful footprints in new snow.
I’d been getting so down low.
These past few years.

Moving on through the ages
We’ll be up on stages
Singing everything changes
These next few years.

That turn where he sings “Here’s a rhetoric / I want you to stay,” comes with this beautiful brass line… and the tone switch is just gorgeous. Reminds me of the more orchestral leanings of Jens Lekman, which is a wonderful thought to spark. Quite beautiful indeed.

Bottom Line: Sunturns return with that bit of hope we all need.

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Crying Day Care Choir “It’s Almost Time for a Christmas Tree” (2022)

Elz Productions
Buy: Apple Music | Amazon MP3 | Amazon.uk MP3 | Amazon.de MP3 | Amazon.fr MP3

Sweden’s Crying Day Care Choir are one of those bands that I’m always hoping will release more Christmas music. They have such an incredible back catalog of songs, which I have been happy to feature many, many times, and I encourage everyone to check out if you are unfamiliar with them. They have taken a few years off from writing seasonal songs, but thankfully return with the brand-spanking new “It’s Almost time for a Christmas Tree.” This song is quite unlike the others, as it is part of the same experimental songwriting project as their recent Give Me Something Vol. 1 EP. With both the EP and this song, Crying Day Care Choir used Damien Hirst’s “The Currency” project for writing inspiration. Hirst has created 10,000 paintings and offered them up for sale. Buyers have the choice of purchasing either the physical object or an NFT, and if they choose the NFT, the physical object is burned. CDCC has exclusively used the pieces slated for the pyre to draw inspiration from, and in a way, giving these objects destined for oblivion a new, eternal life. I’d love to know which panel of colorful dots inspired a Christmas song! The song’s verses are soft, sweet, and piano-driven, but that chorus is will get your blood flowing. “It’s almost time for a Christmas tree / If you’re bringing it home you’re all I need.” Those choruses sound like they were an absolute blast to record – there is a palpable joy to be heard here. How lucky we are to have ears!

Bottom Line: Crying Day Care Choir long ago secured their spot in my heart, and my heart continues to grow.

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Wicketkeeper “Ho Ho It’s Christmas Again” (2022)

Umpire Records
Buy: Bandcamp | Apple Music | Amazon MP3 | Amazon.uk MP3

Let me give you a quick peek behind the curtain here at Christmas Underground. There is often a healthy discussion in the Twitter DMs between myself and other Christmas music-obsessed folks, and there may have been a comment about my site that went something (exactly) like this: “I say it’s pretty darn easy to make a mix entitled ‘Christmas music to slash your wrists by.'” To which, I replied, “You gotta have your niche.” Well… I’m not all tearjerkers and Christmas humbug (I’m only 51% of those), the other 49% is searching for a song that will make my ass move. So I introduce London’s Wicketkeeper, who has written a song that is 34% wonderful, and 66% fucking amazing, “Ho Ho It’s Christmas Again.” But you really have to look behind the lyrics – they are saying something really profound here. Like in the last verse, where they mix it up and add the “WOOOO.”

Ho Ho It’s Christmas Again,
Ho Ho It’s Christmas Again,
WOOOOO,
lalalalalalalalalalala lalalalalalalalalalala,
lalalalalalalalalalala lalalalalalalalalalala

Kinda brings a tear to your eye.

Bottom Line: The most fun 1.5 minutes of Christmas music you will experience this holiday season.

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Sara Noelle “I’ll Sleep ‘Til Christmas” (2022)

Self Released
Buy: Bandcamp

Sara Noelle has been blessing us with atmospheric folk Christmas songs every year since 2020, and I feel like once you hit three years in a row, we are going to consider it a tradition. This year’s song is as good as the last and suggests that once a few more years pass by, you have yourself a fantastic, cohesive album of incredibly beautiful Christmas songs. These songs are for warmly snuggling, canoodling, burrowing, and such around a fire on those nights when Bing, Andy, and Ella are a bit too in-your-face Christmas. “I’ll Sleep ‘Til Christmas” is a particularly cozy song, where one finds peace in the season, where it calms the outside world and makes you feel safe:

There’s a present in the presence
Time slows down
See the joy in the sky
Flickering stars
Flickering stars

One night in December
Peace calms fear
So I’ll sleep ’til Christmas
I’ll sleep ’til Christmas this year

That is some lovely stuff.

Bottom Line: Sara Noelle continues building her unique catalog of truly excellent atmospheric folk Christmas music.

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Lexie Carroll “Christmas Day” (2022)

sevenfoursevensix
Buy: Bandcamp | Apple Music | Amazon MP3 | Amazon.uk MP3 | Amazon.de MP3 | Amazon.fr MP3

At some point, likely soon, 17-year-old Lexie Carroll will just be Lexie Carroll, a thoughtful songwriter with a lovely voice. Heck, she might be 18 by now, as I am only familiar with the press written about her (Clash song of the day), and I am unfamiliar with her birthday. But I would be remiss to not mention her youth, as it makes this simple, yet beautiful vingette of a Christmas at home with family even more impressive. Give it a listen.

Bottom Line: From London to the rest of the world, this song will be on mixes.

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Bird Friend “Christmas Song​” (2021/2022)

Sedan Is Real
Buy: Bandcamp (NYOP)

From the cold reaches of Portsmouth, New Hampshire comes Bird Friend, compiling their two seasonal singles onto one handy cassette/digital release. The Christmas song, appropriately titled “Christmas Song,” was initially released on their 2021 EP, Songs About Crime, and is a warm story-song of love without much money, a reality that a lot of us can relate to at some point in our lives… maybe even today. Love can find you at any moment in your life, whether you have enough money for wine or not – and thankfully they don’t get caught shoplifting:

when we went on christmas eve
to the convenience store
i was a bum and you were venus
in the front seat of your honda accord

heads or tails would determine who would go
steal us a bottle of booze
you slipped that bottle of wine into your purse
like it was what you were born to do

and i knew
i had to have you

Bottom Line: Short, sweet, and with that bit of vice that can spice up any holiday song, this hard-scrabble love story is quite worth your time.

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Alex Exists “Never Christmas Without You” (2022)

The Confidence Emperors
Buy: Bandcamp

Sometimes you just want some swagger. Toronto’s Alex Exists is overflowing with such swagger in his big, glam-infused Christmas single, “Never Christmas Without You.” The guitars bend, the vocals soar, and the attitude seeps out of every line. While the song’s first notes immediately place this song within the Christmas canon, the lyrics are far more interesting than you may anticipate. There are these couplets of contradiction that I thought are so perfect and relatable:

Love and hate
Are both the same
You can’t control where
Your heart is aimed
We hated the cold but
Still loved the snow

Delivered with Alex’s expressive vocals, this song is filled with huge brush strokes of emotion. I found his delivery to be captivating – he isn’t singing a song, he is completely engaged in performing it. While I might continue on to opine about what his motivation might be when writing this song, Alex explains it quite well on his Bandcamp page:

This is a song for anyone that feels crestfallen during the holiday season. Love it or hate it, the holidays bring out a lot of different and often complicated emotions in us all. This is a sentimental song that bites back and evokes a bit of sass towards all those hurtful moments in life. If you’re feeling lonely, like I used to during these times, you might resonate with this song. No matter how tragic life gets for you, there is always an extra seat at our table.

Bottom Line: A big, beautiful, emotional song for a complicated time of year.

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Have Yourself a Merry Indie Christmas Vol. 1 & Vol. 2 (2022)

A Benefit for Crisis
Buy: Bandcamp

I often think about what it would be like to be just now getting into this hobby of underground Christmas music mix-making. When I got in the game (18 years ago!), there wasn’t quite the wealth of indie rock/pop/alt.country/etc Christmas releases to hunt down. Bandcamp, the venue which I primarily exploit to find cool new songs, wasn’t founded until 2007, and it wasn’t until 2010 that I could have even embedded a track on a site like Christmas Underground. It is both exhilarating and terrifying to think about dipping my toes in for the first time in 2022… there is just so much to listen to – years and years of great songs to get through, let alone all the new releases that come out every year. Well, lucky for my imaginary self, as well as that very real person taking their first stab at making a cool Christmas mix, fellow weirdo Christmas music fan Kevin McGrath has created the perfect introduction to this niche of holiday music with the massive, expansive collection of 108 songs, Have Yourself a Merry Indie Christmas Vol. 1 & Vol. 2. This is like one of those The Greatest ________ Album in the World collections I used to bump into in the import sections of the 2000s – packing an absolute ton of the tracks you need to hear to fully get what has been going on. The sheer effort that it took to clear 108 songs is astounding, let alone the challenges of contacting bands that are no longer together, and there are some wonderful ones represented here, to which I’m delighted their musical legacy will persist. Readers of this site will find some familiar faces and names, such as Sweet Tempest, St. Lenox, Charlie’s Hand Movements, The Ornaments, Les Bicyclettes de Belsize, and many, many more.

Just know you are bound to discover a new classic or two that you’ve never bumped into before. Christmas Underground is a one-person shop, and I can’t and won’t be able to know every single cool indie Christmas song out there… as I’m currently sitting here listening to Volume 1, bobbing my head to a song I’ve never heard – and I love it. All this great music also benefits a great cause, Crisis, a UK charity that helps the homeless. So, while the suggested price for each massive collection is a mere £7/$8.50, just know that you don’t necessarily have to give only $8.50. Maybe make yourself a sandwich each day this week for lunch and give a bit more? This is the season of giving, and in a world where billionaires aren’t going to save us, we need to look out for each other.

Bottom Line: These two releases could fashion 3-4 years of indie Christmas mixes for your friends and family. It is an absolutely essential purchase for new and old collectors alike.

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Herr Wade – Weihnachten​.​.​. Willkommen zur​ü​ck! (2022)

Platiruma!!!
Buy: Bandcamp (CD/Digital) | Apple Music | Amazon.de MP3 | Amazon.fr MP3

Jørn Åleskjær (The Loch Ness Mouse, Monobird, Sapphire & Steel) and Sebastian Voss (Nah…, The Fisherman and his Soul, Cinema Engines) have teamed up for some cross-cultural, Google-translatable Christmas tunes. I speak ein bisschen Deutsch, and no Norweigain, but I do speak indiepop and this is some lovely stuff. I’ve featured The Fisherman and his Soul multiple times here on Christmas Underground, so I knew there would be something here I was likely to really connect with. Perhaps it is my faint familiarity with the language that draws me to the German-language tracks, but I have to take special note of “Und sie tanzen I’m Himmel,” which translates to “And they dance in the sky.” I’m going to continue to utilize Google translate, so please give me some grace should Google screw it up a bit – but I loved these sweet lyrics.

can you remember?
It’s been a few years…
We looked up at the sky and
Then you said to me:

“I know a secret
And I’m happy to let you in on it.”
And I nodded, agreed, and suddenly it started snowing.

“Exactly! Here, that’s the point.” You said in a low voice.
“Every single flake is a little dancer.
And up there in the sky they dance day in and day out. And when they feel like it, it starts to snow.”

And they dance in the sky

The track also had that mid-tempo, jangly indiepop groove that I need at least every 3-6 months to survive, so that certainly plays into my love of this track as well. There are wonderful moments in the other songs as well, little choices like the beautiful banjo in “Domino,” and the sweetness of the leadoff track, “You’ve Come A Very Long Way (For Being Such A Close Friend),” are undeniable.

Bottom Line: There is a lot to love in a tiny little EP.

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