Seattle's Green Monkey Records, helmed by Tom Dyer, has been a regular fountain of independent rock Christmas records over a fairly lengthy period of time. For 2018, the major domo and his daughter put out this holiday album, stealing from Bill & Ted for their title. Warning up front for Green Monkey followers: many of these songs were on past years of the annual Green Monkey various artists collections, credited to either Tom or Kat, or to some other artist name altogether, and the remainders are on this year's collection, about which more later. You'll find that Tom's stuff is mostly band-oriented rock-outs and Kat is more indie-folk-pop, but it all hangs together pretty well. Highlights from this collection are "(I'm a) Lonely Little Christmas Tree" and "Christmas Train," which just to put the maraschino on the sundae are both sides of a 2018 single by Tom and the True Olympians. "Tree" is a nice organ-led strut and "Train" is a bluesy stomp. "Christmas Is Love" makes a solid album opener, "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day" is mellow, a nicely strummed and sung version, and "O Come O Come Emmanuel" is suitably portentous. And the lengthy garage-band stomp through "T'was the Night Before Christmas" is good fun too. If you haven't been a rabid follower of the Green Monkey compilations, you should check this out.
Leave a comment