Free Present!

Sick of all those Christmas songs on repeat everywhere you go? Fancy something a bit different but still Christmas-ish? Then this is for you, a collection of 25 Christmas songs, including covers of the classics, orginal tracks and a couple of novelty songs. I’ll leave this up for a week, then it will be gone forever.

It’s available here

Tracklising and comments:

1. O Little Town of Bethlehem – Belle & Sebastian
One of two tracks from thier 2002 Christmas Peel Session. Opens with a bit *of a jazz-style jam, and is done in a sort of funky lounge style.

2. The Christmas Song (I Wish That I Could Stay) – The Raveonettes
You’ll know this even though you won’t recognise the name. It was used as an advert for Dobbies Garden Centres a few years back and still gets a bit of airplay around Christmas these days.

3. Away In a Manger – Hyperbubble
I know nothing at all about this song, nor even where I got the MP3 from, but it’s short and sort of sweet. Think Away In a Manger crossed with dodgy 80 electronica.

4. Little Donkey – Chris T-T
First of two tracks from Chris T-T’s Christmas EP (try saying that 5 times fast). A traditional song done in a very stripped down acoustic guitar and vocals style, with a few sleighbells natch.

5. Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas (acoustic) – The Black Tulips
One of a couple of tracks from Maps Magazine’s Advent Calander it’s another stripped down version of a classic, but it’s also slightly unsettling.

6. O Come, All Ye Faithful – Belle & Sebastian
Second of the Peel Session tracks, but done in a much more normal fashion, infact it’s funny in that it’s so traditional, sung as a choir and played on an organ. You could almost be in a Church.

7. Alan Parsons in a Winter Wonderland – Grandaddy
A ‘lost’ Grandaddy track, it’s Walking in a Winter Wonderland but changed so it’s all about Alan Parsons: “In the meadow we could build a snowman, and pretend that he’s Alan Parsons”.

8. I Believe in Father Christmas – Six by Seven
A fairly straight cover of that classic Greg Lake song that was protesting about the commercialisaion of Christmas, and ended up a part of it.

9. Everything’s Gonna Be Cool This Christmas – Eels
Moving into the original christmas songs now that you’re less likely to know. Never been a big fan of Eels but have always loved this song. It’s an unapologetically upbeat Christmas song that doesn’t try to be knowing or ironic or such, which is somewhat rare in modern-day Christmas tracks.

10. Merry Xmas Everybody – R.E.M.
No that isn’t a mis-print. This really is an R.E.M. cover of the Slade classic from this year’s fan club CD. It features Mills and Stipe singing in harmony and isn’t as good as I thought it would be, but it’s R.E.M. covering Slade, how could I not include it!

11. Bizzare Christmas Incident – Ben Folds
Aka “Santa is a Big Fat Fuck”, this was Fold’s attempt at writing a Christmas song for a movie. They later got back to him and told him it was a kids movie, so he wrote something else, that’s later on but this makes a nice introduction to the weirder section of the disc.

12. Christmas Is About The Presence – God’s Pottery
A four minute song stemming from pretty much a single pun, but it’s sorta fun. God’s Pottery are a spoof Christian-rock band from the US. This track is from thier infamous appearance on a Christian radio station where someone didn’t pay enough attention to exactly who they were before booking them!

13. Silent Night (7 o’clock news) – Simon and Garfunkel
Interlude.

14. Christmas Single – Mitch Benn
Comedian Mitch Benn’s take on Christmas tracks, it’s remarkably well observed though on reflection I wish I’d included “Christmas Whether You Like It Or Not” but that’s also available on his Christmas Podcast , along with a whole bunch of other Christmas songs and some nice ranting: “Look: if only Christians can call it Christmas, then only vikings can call it Thursday”. Well worth a listen.

15. 100,000 Turkeys – Chris T-T
The second of three Chris T-T tracks, this is a studio recording of his novelty christmas track to wrap up the weirder section of the album. Chris has a knack for writing funny songs about animals, his new album is out early next year.

16. Xmas In The Artic Pole – Drugstore
A fairly obscure track about the brilliance of snow at Christmas.

17. O Come,O Come Emmanuel – Belle & Sebastian
A studio recording of the classic track, better than the Peel Session version by virtue of being recorded before Isobel Campbell left the band, so the haunting, breathless vocals are intact.

18. The Little Drummer Boy – The Dandy Warhols
Another cover of a classic, a rock version of Little Drummer Boy. Okay so the Bowie/Crosby version is probably better but it’s so cliched…

19. Sleighbells (Christmas Makes Me Blue) – How to Swim
A cool little Christmas song from a friend’s band. I actually don’t like 85% of thier stuff (sorry Chris!), but the other 15% I absolutely adore. This is part of that 15%. It goes a bit weird in the middle for a few seconds by the way but all good Christmas songs have a little bit of scat singing in the middle don’t they? Don’t they? Oh.

20. Good King Wenceslas – Chris T-T
The last Chris T-T track, another cover. Hopefully by now you all love him and will go and buy his albums. They’re available in all larger branches of HMV and such. There’s also another two Christmas tracks up on his Piespace

21. Lonely Christmas Eve – Ben Folds
The other Ben Folds christmas track, included mainly as there hasn’t yet been a brilliant piano solo on this album yet, and that won’t do.

22. White Christmas (WXPN Version) – Flaming Lips
Radio session version of the Flaming Lips somewhat infamous White Christmas cover. A bit less over-produced than the studio version, which is good. Wayne has an awesome singing voice but for some reason they insist on covering it up with horrible digital effects for half the songs they put out, stopping me loving them unconditionally.

23. Happy Christmas (War Is Over) – Sense Field
Another fairly straight cover. Honestly I mostly just really like this track in all forms.

24. Mistletoe and Wine – The Black Arts
I think the band name is wrong here but it’s by Art Brut and Keith TOTP. It’s a unique version of the song that suceeds in making it a lot less offensive.

25. White Wine In The Sun – Tim Minchin
This was performed on Radio 2’s Tim Minchin’s Loving & Peaceful Yuletide Half Hour still listenable on Listen Again . It’s a lovely song and doesn’t really fit on this album as it needs you to pay attention and isn’t great background music, so it’s tacked on to the end as a sort of ‘bonus track’. If you don’t have an 80 minute CD handy, leave it off. Talking to Anna after the special aired I started getting more and more obsessed with Minchin (because it’s okay if someone shares an obsession) and started digging into his older, pre-stand-up proper musician stuff. He really is awesome.

Disclaimer: this stuff is only up for a week, and the vast majority isn’t commercially available, but if anyone has any major objections about thier tracks being here please let me know and I’ll remove them

One final Christmas recommendation is the Ray Peacock Xmas Podcast (also iTunes). I’ve been meaning to talk about this podcast for a while now in a podcast round-up but I’m too lazy. But it’s awesome, and consists mostly of Ray Peacock and Ed Gamble making Raji James’ life miserable. Suffice it to say, if you find all the goodwill and peace-vibes going around at Christmas just a bit too much to handle, retreat into your iPod and this for an hour!

Dean Love : 24 Dec 2007 23:53 |  Tags: Music |  Comments (6) |  Report a problem