Every year we get a few new holiday albums. Most of them have moments of modest brilliance, and occasionally we get an absolute standout. And of course, some holiday albums are utter, unmitigated crap.
For indie labels, assembling a holiday album is a challenging task. The mere act of acknowledging a nominally Christian event like Christmas can be the kiss of death among the fashionably agnostic indie rock set. The result is usually a mixed bag of newly-written, nominally holiday-themed songs, tongue-in-cheek takes on traditional tunes and few half clever, half kitschy re-interpretations of classics. It's a Cool, Cool Christmas is no exception. This sort of record can be judged on two levels: the quality of its songs and the marquee value of the acts who perform them. This is where It's a Cool, Cool Christmas distinguishes itself.
A joint venture between UK radio outlet Xfm and the Jeepster label (home to Belle and Sebastian, among others), It's a Cool, Cool Christmas benefits the homeless. Naturally, if you really want to help the homeless, you should just do without the CD and give your money directly to a charity, or perhaps to a reliable-looking homeless person...but the charity tie-in is nice. The artists have donated the songs, too -- most of them newly-recorded, all of them seasonally appropriate.
The mixture of acts is satisfyingly diverse: Grandaddy, Eels, Calexico, Belle and Sebastian, The Flaming Lips, Six By Seven, Teenage Fanclub, Giant Sand, Low and a dozen others create a thoughtful, upbeat holiday mood. You'd need a damn big, damn good record collection to make a holiday-themed mix tape this interesting.
On the nominally-holiday-themed song front, which for most artists means writing a decent pop song with a few church bells in it, Eels score with "Everything's Gonna Be Cool This Christmas". Saint Etienne deliver the reverent fifties-styled B-side "My Christmas Prayer" and Departure Lounge tug at the heartstrings with "Christmas Downer". Low's "Just Like Christmas", the lead track from their Christmas EP, is also included here; this certainly seems to be their year. If you want something a little less Christmassy, try Giant Sand's perplexing "Thank You Dreaded Black Ice, Thank You", or work off that egg nog buzz shaking your ass to Titan's "Spiritual Guidance", complete with its disco-fied "Jingle Bells" riff.
Want some goofy oddities? Grandaddy's "Alan Parsons in a Winter Wonderland" seems like a "funny the first time, stupid thereafter" conceit, but it's actually pretty entertaining, shoehorning the prog-rock icon into "Winter Wonderland" in an amusing fashion (mind you, I'm writing this after only three listens and may well be sick of it by the time this review goes to press). Morgan's dub-funky "Christmas in Waikiki" should get folks gyrating beneath the mistletoe; its swanky, down 'n dirty sax riffs are particularly satisfying, and should make the track required listening at any out-of-control office party. We suggest that you save the Flaming Lips' "White Christmas (demo for Tom Waits)" 'til everyone at said party has had a bit to drink.
The best surprise here is that there are some great takes on traditional songs. Belle and Sebastian's "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" is a weird arrangement that does some odd things to the song's metre, but Isobel Campbell (I'm assuming it's her) salvages it with vocals of almost unearthly beauty. The Dandy Warhols prove once again that "Little Drummer Boy" is idiot-proof, turning in an absolutely brilliant power-pop version, and Six By Seven's take on Greg Lake's "I Believe in Father Christmas" bookends it nicely. Lauren Laverne's haunting, album-closing version of "In the Bleak Midwinter" pairs a traditional choral vocal with midtempo beats, blips and a throbbing bassline; it's downright mesmeric if you're in a receptive state of mind.
Like most holiday-themed albums, It's a Cool, Cool Christmas is a mixed bag; you won't like everything, but it's a better mix than most. If you live outside the UK, you might have a hard time justifying a costly import CD that you can only really listen to for about six weeks each year... but as modern holiday "pop" compilations go, this one's well above average. You might not want to put it away when the holidays are over.
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