Labels: Small Bear Records
Review by: MH
It’s about 45 degrees outside, I’m sweating profusely within seconds of leaving the station for my 20 minute walk to work and magpies are dive-bombing cyclists and passers-by who walk within a hundred yards of their nests – obviously that can mean only one thing and that is that Christmas is coming! Not sure I’ll ever fully acclimatise to a Brisbane Christmas. In keeping with tradition, Small Bear Records are putting out another Christmas compilation of songs by a billion bands that are of varying degrees of Christmas-ness.
I’m familiar with a few of the bands playing on these 25 songs to varying levels as a few of these have come in for review before and others sound familiar from previous Christmas compilations. Like I say, they are Christmas-y to various degrees. They have bands on here from all over the world – even The Isle of Man is represented. I don’t remember folky indie poppers Postcode being so riffy but riffy they are on “Switch Off”. The closest to tradition would be Avaleya and The Glitterhawks’ version of “White Christmas” while on the other side of the coin you have the gloomy post punk of “Abandon” by Slow Decay. Variation is aplenty and there is even a Teenage Fanclub cover version of “December” on here by Marc Elston – he throws in a kind of electronica slant to it. A great song that I haven’t heard in a while. There is lots of pleasant indie pop on here too.
I’ve had this compilation on a fair bit this week which begs the question: Am I listening to this because I love hearing Christmas songs that are less obviously Christmas-y? Or am I listening to this as I am meant to be reviewing it? These things get blurry sometimes.