Mod Guitar Christmas, Stratocruiser (Waterstone)

Rewritten entry: The guitar maker collaborated with this airplane-named power pop band to put out a four-song EP for 2007, featuring their original "Last Christmas Girl" from 2006, all jangly guitars and harmony vocals straight out of the Sixties, with a 12-string guitar leading the way. You might hear a little Big Star in this, I hear just a taste of Bram Tchaikovsky in the chorus. The title song, with its references to jingle-jangle meshing nicely with the jangling guitar sounds, is a winner, as is "Holidaze," with its "what I need" chorus rejecting all material goods in favor of love; and things wrap up with a cover of the Osmonds' (yes) "Crazy Horses," which isn't a holiday tune near as I can tell, but their performance of it does have a slight sniff of Tenacious D about it. This disc went away, of course, but in 2009 the band reissued it, dropping "Crazy Horses" and adding two more originals, "Thank You Christmas" and "Santa's Got Something For You." Click the disc art to grab all five songs from Amazon.