Labels: My Pal God
Review by: Andy Malcolm
This is like the biggest missed opportunity of all time. Here’s how it should have gone: Get a bunch of indie rock stars and unknowns together and get them to cover Christmas songs or write their own. Instead, it backfired like hell and they ended up including some total bollocks punk rock songs and a few seemingly non-Christmassy connected tracks that ruin the mood. Here goes:
- The Law – this is old shitty punk rock from ’81. 1881? go home.
- Silkworm – pretty basic, one guy and his guitar in the main, but with some drumming and a bit of guitar backing. pleasantly melancholy. like me.
- Atom & His Package – atom’s rocking song about what the jews *really* do at christmas. you know the guys style, you know he’s funny, you know this is pretty good – great chorus, “princess di, we killed her! el nino, we made it! reggie white, is stupid! billy joel, let’s trade him to the christians!”. go atom.
- Lustre King – this sucks
- C-Clamp – now this is what should have dominated this record. indie rock versions of other christmas songs, this one being “2000 miles” [pretenders]. super soothing and warm, this is what it’s all about
- the Goblins – crap
- Sarge – super nice indie pop version of that ‘wham’ chrimbo song, you know the one. features some super cheesy keyboards. oh my… elizabeth *sigh* – pity the fool who was given her heart then gave it away the very next day
- Sean Na Na – a john denver song according to the liner notes. i like a lot of belle and sebastien stuff, and this guy (from the few songs i’ve heard) is basically the american belle & seb. so all those americans who think they’re cool and weird by being into b&s and don’t know about sean na na are actually totally uncool for failing to notice they have an equal on their own doorstep
- Margo vs Eifell Tower – spooky. very dark and moody, and with strange sound fx indeed. you keep expecting it to explode, but it don’t. tense
- Crucial Youth – i like the straight edge joke about “X-mas”, but the music is bollocks! if early Dag Nasty had sucked, they’d sound like this. but i think this is a joke band from the 80’s, so no worries
- Sixto – musically and atmospherically this reminds me a little of the new antarctica stuff (now there’s a band that oughta cover some 80’s christmas classics). struggles to go anywhere but not too bad at all. recorded with greg norman. fore!
- Universal Life And Accident – cover a Prince song called “Another Lonely Christmas”. i can vaguely recall the original. anyway ULA go for desperate ‘telephone’ vocals over scratchy indie rock
- Paul Newman – heh, Nadia was asking me about these guys the other day, and i said i had no idea who they were. whoops. um, yeah, your good ole atmopsheric post-rock instrumentalists it seems. except they have very soft vocals that crop up 2 minutes into things. if you like the new mogwai ep or tristeza, you’ll like this song. pretty pretty.
- We Ragazzi – kicks off with a quirky doors style organ sound, brings in some guitar, some very odd vocals. just all round unusual. i’m not sure really.
- City on Film – the reason i own this record. i paid £10 basically to own a song where bob nanna and elizabeth *sigh* duet on “fairytale in new york”, which is by about several million miles the best christmas song of all time. i understand this track was elsewhere available, but no longer. this is less frenetic than the orginal, but hey, it’s bob. my hero. year 2thou has simply gotta happen, purely so he can get the city on film album out.
- Burning Star-Core – an annoying electronica mess, featuring stupid sound fx. it does my head in. i can’t listen to this.
- Winechuggers – “the only thing i get for christmas is… drunk”. slightly annoying dual vocalled country nonsense. rumbleseat would make this listenable. currently, it is anything but
- Sweep the Leg Johnny – the biggest crime on this record, all things considered. stlj decided to cover the old band aid song, and just totally fudge it up with multiple bad vocals and lots of messy parts. this could have been fun, but it sounds rushed. weak. and painful.
- Lullaby For The Working Class – kicks off with sleigh bells, some violin, and a very downbeat feel. this is the kind of stuff that *real* musicians play, those that know how to use more instruments than just drum, bass, 2 guitars, and then have enough wits about them to go write their own music instead of playing something that was written a couple of hundred years ago by a long dead [de]composer. what’s the point in that? big ups to the lullaby for using their talent in a positive way. anyways, this track is the soundtrack to father christmas’ suicide. not happy. oh, and while i’m about it, what’s with that deep elm slogan – “records for the working class”. wtf? $12 a cd and not a protest punk band in sight. so i offer them a new slogan: working class, my arse!
So, a mixed bag. And how they could even think of issuing this without including Cap’n Jazz’s “Winter Wonderland” is beyond me. So, um, yeah. Merry Christmas my friend, see you in the year 2thou should we make it out the other side.