Well, Christmas is right around the corner, and if your family is anything like mine, you have been bombarded with Christmas music non-stop for the last month. Now, there is nothing wrong with a little holiday cheer, but if I have to hear one more minute of Delilah’s sentimental Christmas memories, I might swear off the holiday forever. So, rather than give up what is otherwise a very enjoyable time of year, I’ve decided instead to put together a little mix of holiday music to rescue all of you who are drowning in a sea of Delilah induced Christmas tears. Enjoy, and a very happy holidays to you all.
1. Santa, Bring My Baby Back to Me – Belle & Sebastian
2. Must Be Santa – Bob Dylan
3. Blue Christmas – Bright Eyes
4. Santa Claus is Back in Town – Elvis Presley
5. O Holy Night (Shoes Interruption) – My Morning Jacket
6. Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing – Sufjan Stevens
7. What are You Doing New Year’s Eve – Ella Fitzgerald
8. Christmas in Prison – John Prine
9. Fairytale of New York – The Pogues
10. Father Chrtistmas – The Kinks
11. Chipmonks Song – Birds and Arrows & Butterflies
And I thought I would include this just for good measure. I just saw Fanfarlo in New York, and they did this song…who knew they did Christmas too!
There was a time when albums told a story…unified from beginning to end musically, topically, and thematically. To listen to such an album meant that you had to become immersed…had to invest yourself from beginning to end…to listen to a single track alone was to destroy the story, to shatter the artist’s creation. On their own, each song seemed somehow lost or out of place…but together, they formed a masterpiece. In an age of digital media and the marketable single, such albums have become increasingly rare…yet on occasion a band comes together to produce just such a masterpiece. Not just entertainment, but a work of art, a piece of literature, a thing of beauty. With their release of Hospice, the Antlers have created just such an album…a dark and morose record that expounds on love and loss with an eerie and ghostly air.
The Antlers – “Bear”
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The Antlers is the creation of Peter Silberman, who was later joined by Michael Lerner and Darby Cicci for the album Hospice. There is no way for me to do this album justice…I can provide a song or two, but again, the experience will be incomplete. To listen to these two tracks is like reading random chapters from a book. You can make sense of them, they each tell a tale, but they are mere fragments of the whole…the story is lost. Hospice reads like an epic…full of sorrow and loss, pain and grief. Few albums tell such a story, few albums evoke such emotion…it’s not enough to listen to the parts, you need to go and experience the whole. Become lost in it…become immersed in it…and when you reach the end, start it all over again.
The Antlers – “Two”
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