Sam, a longtime singer-songwriter who started out in the Christian field, went secular, and then became the soundtrack composer for "Gilmore Girls," has now joined the pledge-drive movement with her "Long Play" project, in which listeners are asked to spend $52 in advance for five EPs and a full album of material, garnished with videos, journals and other special material. This 2009 song is part of that, but she's thoughtfully made it available to Amazon for individual download as well. It's the Nativity story rendered in the kind of low-fi approach Sam has been following on her last couple of major-label discs, and it's not bad at all. I've been a Sam fan for a while, so I'll be interested to see how she does with the "Long Play." Sam previously did a version of "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear" that is difficult to find, though her arrangement was used by Bruce Cockburn on his Christmas album. UPDATE: "It Came" is on Sony's Acoustic Christmas, which is out of print but still turns up at retail during Christmas. Sam's "Long Play" EP with "Cold Dark Night" also has another original, "It Doesn't Feel Like Christmas," plus "It Came," "Silent Night," "Away in a Manger" and "O Holy Night." That EP will only be available to "Long Play" subscribers for the time being. FURTHER UPDATE: "It Doesn't Feel Like Christmas" was given away free on her website as of Dec. 23, 2009. Go here. Stylewise, it's a bit of a throwback to her Martinis and Bikinis album, poppier than her last couple of albums. And then there's this video of her doing "Away In a Manger":
The Fab Four, a fairly well-known Beatles tribute band, created two full albums of Christmas goodness for 2002 under the titles A Fab Four Christmas and Have Yourself a FAB-ulous Little Christmas for Laserlight, a budget label, but apparently they didn't stay in print long, if the complaints of some fans are anything to go by. Last year, the band took matters into their own hands and reissued the two discs in a single wrapper, a clever one too, one that parodies the U.S. version of the Help! album. The Fabs cut a wide swath across the history of the Beatles -- the two CDs, in their original packaging, are even color-coded the same as the famous Beatles 62-66 and 67-70 collections (see below) to tip off committed listeners -- and their vocal impressions, particularly of Paul and John, are pretty authentic. (One might also note the red album has a strong resemblance to Beatles 1.) Some of the more inventive arrangements include "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" via "When I'm 64" and "Honey Pie," "Silent Night" as "Norwegian Wood," "The Christmas Song" as "Here, There and Everywhere," "Good King Wenceslaus" sung to "Tell Me What You See" and "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" as "Within You Without You." An extra treat on Fabulous is "Dear Santa," a cut from Ringo Starr's Christmas album done to the arrangement of "Oh! Darling." Now that the band has this at its website, there should be no more complaints -- go grab it. Happy Krimble, indeed. 
The self-proclaimed "hardest working band in snow business" from Chico, Calif., brings us an eponymous album of holiday tuneage. Can't quite run down when this was released; their MySpace page went up in 2005 but the publicity suggests this is new for 2009. It's your basic modern power-pop ensemble rocking out through a dozen tunes from the Christmas season. Most tunes are familiar but there are some originals, like "Walking With the Ghost of Christmas," "Christmastime Is Here (Again!)," "Christmas From Berlin," "Hanukkah Mambo" and "Christmas Is Lonely (When You're a Jew)." The chosen people do well on this album, Hanukkah Alert, with three tunes, including their own fancy-dance tempo version of "Hanukkah O Hanukkah." These guys know how to rock the holiday, with spontaneous-sounding performances that encourage dancing and acting out. The classic carols get jerked around a little bit, and "We Three Kings" has a mock-portentious delivery worthy of an old-school prog band. A surprising take on the Ramones' "Merry Christmas (I Don't Want to Fight Tonight)" turns it into a 50s ballad, and just so a certain blog knows, they cover "Last Christmas" as well. This album makes me wish I was in Chico for the holidays. Here, have a taste:
Mellow-voiced Mia likes her synths, as this 2009 EP demonstrates. She takes the poppy dance floor approach to a pair of classics, "Santa Baby," and "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree," the former having perhaps a bit too mellow approach vocally but the latter kicking things up a notch with just a light dusting of distorted guitar. The original "December 25 (New Love)" is more of a midtempo love ballad, not bad in total, with two mixes offered.
Here's a young band from Santa Monica who chose to make their first album a Christmas album, thereby angling for the affection of Mistletunes readers, a small but influential group of people. I'd like to think they're Mistletunes readers themselves, because this is exactly the kind of album this website was created to promote -- irreverent rock 'n roll about the holiday, the good and the bad, balancing sentiment and snark, and you can dance to it too. (The band issues a preemptive mea culpa on their MySpace page: "Although most of the songs are fast, there are one or two lame slow ones. Sorry.") Three of the tunes are noted as "Explicit," including "Santa," the title of which thoughtfully leaves off the expletive preceding the jolly elf's name in the chorus of this song that rags him for not being cool and never showing up. "It's Christmas Again" depicts a lover's quarrel in which "just for tonight, I'll tolerate you." And when the singer shops for "A Gift As Nice As You," he ends up getting her a gift card. "Uke Medley" appears to be a couple of songs, one called "I'd Like To See You On Christmas," the other "Leave a Little Light On," performed on multiple ukeleles. And "Unwanted Guest" dispatches its topic with relief and glee. Great songs, rambunctious performances -- well, what are you waiting for?
Another rock band I hadn't heard about before, they apparently cut the theme song for NBC's new show "Community." Hope they get more out of that than The Rembrandts did for their more popular NBC comedy. Leaving that aside, they put up a single for download and it's a nice one, no relation to the Mariah Carey tune, a bit of a shuffle not too dissimilar to Slade's "Merry Xmas Everybody" with a bit of a 70s vibe to it. "Without you here, that shit don't mean a thing" is possibly Christmas quote of the year for 2009, by the way. This was free at iTunes; apologies if it isn't by the time you read this.
I'm not familiar with these rocket guys, but this single on iTunes is a solid rock 'n roll version of the classic song that takes nothing from the Phil Spector version. Nice job, guys.
This popular a cappella group is already on record with two Christmas albums, and this year they're attracting attention with a fresh (and free) rendition of "White Christmas." This is a bit glee club to my ears (can you tell I haven't been captivated by that new Fox TV show?) and the group has done much better stuff on its albums, but you can decide for yourself.
Yulenog collections have featured here at Mistletunes in past years, and sure enough 2009 brings us another one. The modus operandi is that Kuruna and friends, most of whom appear to be jazzers of one stripe or another, put together a collection of holiday novelties. Some of this year's better ideas on this collection include the hip-hop number "Santa, Do You Like Dat Booty," complete with auto-tune vocal; "Santa's In-Box (Spamta Claus)," a spoken-word recitation of e-mail come-ons with holiday overtones; "Virgin Mary," a grungy rocker featuring a supreme being's pickup lines; "Great White Surprise," an original with the flavor of Jesus & Mary Chain; "Chuck D's Christmas Carol," another rap Christmas take based on the Public Enemy blueprint; and from "Dreamgirls," a holiday takeoff, "And I Am Telling You I Am Still a Virgin." The performances of traditional carols are perfunctory, though, with the nadir being "The First Noel" done with a chorus of off-pitch pennywhistles. As usual, there are a lot of great ideas here, although you may do some skipping around to get to them.
Alternate Root is a magazine dedicated to Americana, roots and alt-country performers, and for 2009 they issued a holiday compilation with a twist -- it's 25 songs contributed by the magazine's readers. Sort of a multimedia letters section for the magazine, if you will. It's a free download as well. Of course, many of the readers are pro musicians, so this isn't exactly the local high school production of "American Idol" we're dealing with. It's a lot more country than we normally get into at Mistletunes, but since it's free you can pick and choose the tunes as you will. Grub Dog Mitchell's "Rockin' In My Stockin'" is as advertised, a solid rootsy rocker; Carolyn Sills goes 60s girl-group on a tribute to "George Bailey"; Penny Jo Pullus contributes a new version of her "Silent Night, Lonely Night" she did with the Muddpuppies on the Here Comes Another Christmas: Greetings from the Salt City album from around a decade ago; and Lance Norris' "Santa Copped a 'Tude" is a Bob Dylan parody originally heard on the holiday disc by The Stools. Jaime Michaels goes a little more acoustic pop with his "Winter Song" and Steve Fisher puts a bluegrass backing to "Hoovertown," a Depression-era story of sharing strength and woe at Christmastime. Because country is a big part of this, we get cry-in-your-beer tunes like "Jon's Silent Night" by Jon Byrd and "Mommy, Why Was Santa Crying?" by T. Edwin Doss. A little more fun is available from Chief Greenbud's "Let's Get Blazed For the Holidaze," Cody Prevost's "Santa's Got a New Ride" and Candye Kane's "Put the X Back in Xmas," and she discovers "Santa Is a Swinger Now" to a Western swing backing. You'll want to at least sort through this collection, although if you're a regular Alternate Root reader you probably will love this without reservation.
This has actually been out before, on Hi-Fi Christmas Party Vol. 2, but the band has put it up for free download this holiday season. It's a strong power pop outing, somewhere between Revolver-era Beatles and early Cheap Trick in execution, helped by a catchy melody and lyrics that poke and prod the materialism that can infest the holiday. Waterstone Guitars hosts a direct link, but you can just go to the band's website and join their mailing list.
From his 2008 album Resistance, this holiday tune by the reggae legend appears to be at least as concerned with Mickey Mouse as the jolly elf. For that matter, this doesn't sound particularly reggae either, sounding more like a Jamaican take on hip-hop and electronica. But Perry was always a sonic innovator, so it's not surprising he's left the old ways behind.
For those of you with a strong taste for irony, here's a live acoustic performance of "Little Drummer Boy" in which nobody actually plays any sort of percussion instrument. Don't take that as a flip review, though, Mike's a good singer and guitarist and this is a neat performance. Available where you buy your downloads, or you can send it as an e-card as well.
If you're a fan of the band that cut across genres from girl-group to new wave to hip-hop, you'll want this free download of a traditional Christmas song that sounds like it could have been the flip side of "Hanging On the Telephone." So go on, what are you waiting for? Apparently this 2009 performance is a come-on to remember the band when it reunites for a new album in 2010. You'll need to give up an e-mail address for their mailing list, but this one's worth it too.
Laura Vane is a British singer (shout out to Brighton, y'all) whose band includes folks from the UK and Netherlands, and they've come together to sing and play old-school soul music. Without seeing the band, I tried to guess what obscure '60s band I was listening to. Now I know (with help from Martin Johns, who tipped me to this). The song in question is a free download for 2009, but you have to join the band's mailing list to get it. I don't think it's too much to ask for a great honkin' holiday noise like this one.
I've been a little slow getting to this, and with good reason -- this is a free download album with 53 songs on it. Count 'em, 53. As a result, in my last few bouts of posting I kept telling myself, "Oh, I'll get to that when I have a little more time to deal." Well, you know how that goes. So I said it's time to get it posted. Suburban Sprawl is an alt-rock-indie label, and not a very big one, though one might assume the exact opposite with 53 artists involved. So I won't bother unpacking all of that and just get to the music, which in overall quality is pretty darn good across the entire collection. Things kick off with "Twas the Night Before Christmas" done to the tune of "Chopsticks" by The Barrettes and continue in fine style with such tunes as Love Axe's original "Baby, I Wish It Was Cold Outside," Panic & Sharon's electro-pop "Christmastime Is Here," ChrisMas' dance-floor-ready "S.A.N.T.A.," Daniel Zott's Claus lament "Look What You Did, You Little Jerk," Buffay's hip-hop takeoff "Merri Chrissmiss 2 My Dik," which requires a Parental Advisory (ya think?), Coach Mahler's "Hanukkah Blues," Bethlehem Girls Choir's unique medley of "All I Want For Christmas Is You" by Mariah Carey and "Here Comes Your Man" by The Pixies, and so on through all 53 selections. Suburban Sprawl has done this for multiple years, and they're all at the free download site, so do a little discovering of your own.
These guys are a pop-rock band from Worcester, MA, and this comic Christmas song isnt't too hard to penetrate in terms of meanings. (Think looking up at mistletoe, it'll come to you.) Unfortunately, they've only got up for listening on their MySpace page for now, but hopefully we'll have this to look forward to for next year.
For those of you not down with "Family Guy," Cleveland is Peter's black friend, now the star of his very own spinoff half-hour on the Fox network. I'm guessing there's no need to explain who Earth Wind and Fire are, though this song is more from the "Family Guy" world than EWF's. I doubt there's much explanation needed of the title or lyrics to this song, but as obvious as it is it's also fairly entertaining, which now that I think of it is the appeal of the two TV shows mentioned here.
Yes, L.A.'s finest came together in 2009 to record this single with two classic carols. "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town" features what sounds like double-tracked Exene singing in a rather poppy style, but the instrumental track and the guitar solo are vintage X. "Jingle Bells" is John Doe and Exene duetting the vocal, again sounding like the band everybody knows and loves. Amazon has a listing for it but no way to purchase it, so head over to iTunes for a copy.
Westerberg, once of the iconic Replacements, put out an EP called D.G.T. earlier in 2009 that includes the title song, a version of the country classic "Streets of Laredo," and this classic carol, done in an uptempo, Replacements-worthy arrangement. You have to download the whole EP to get the carol, but Amazon only charges 79 cents for it.
Design your family's holiday photo cards with humor - it's one of the easiest and most personal ways to make Hannukah rock!
You could be singing a different tune when you check out the prices for northern ireland car insurance online!
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