Month: September 2020

Put Up Lights

So let’s enjoy the high utility cost of the strings of lights webbing over the outside and inside of your festive holiday domicile. These began as candles on trees, then went electric (but we’ve mostly covered tree lights on this blog), then got narcissistically all over. I mean, Halloween? Fourth of July??? Easter?!?!

Mr. Matt Farley’s back as The Very Nice Interesting Singer Man with his serenade to meaningful “Christmas Lights.” Put ’em up and life makes more sense! Word jazz.

Great Lake Swimmers want you to “Hang a String of Lights” to get with the programming. This lite alt party music might be played on repeat while doing so.

Winterval gets more solemnly emo with “Hang the Lights on the Tree.” Those were the days, when we did that, don’t you recall? Sigh.

Kevin McKinney slackers into the showmanship with “Everybody Wants to See the Lights.” It’s a sad thing, all that expectation weighing down a man. Slo-mo alt-pop that makes whining into poetry.

K1 barely parodies ‘Deck the Halls’ with “Deck the House with Christmas Lights.” The iconoclasm gets wild, however, so follow the rapping bulb!

More overtly humorous (passive-aggressive comedy?) The Therapy Sisters strategize like Caesar for “The War of the Lights.” This sing-songy showtime might hit a bit close to home for some of you. Deal.

Fireplace Lights

We’ve embraced several light sources into our ragtag theme of Christmas Light Songs. So, why not the home’s hearth? It’s where the stockings are hung and Santa appears. And–the Yule log (which should be so dambig that you burn only part of it each of the twelve nights of Xmas)!

Dave & Jeannine rascal the country fiddlin’ for a bad recording “Put Out the Ol’ Yule Log.” Seems forgetting to darken the fireplace will cause some down home regret. Or some two-steppin’.

Black Oak Coven’s album The Homebrewed Book of Pagan Carols offers a “The Yule Log” song about blessed light in the home. It ain’t Christian, but it is holy. Medieval throat boxing.

That, natch, brings us to Prof. Peter Schickele’s “Throw the Yule log on Uncle John.” This parody of Dark Aged chorale ronds is great fun for all teen-aged ironists, including Emerald City Voices.

Also outre, Hot Buttered Elves get psychedelic garage with “Larry was a Yule Log,” in which the holiday centerpiece is anthropomorphized with horrifyingly danceable results.

Let’s retire with a sprightly folk pop piece about the fireplace in the work-a-day world. Sure I could include some random anonymous spoken word piece from the 1960s (hi-fi test album??) about how-to make a Christmas fire…

…but let’s cut instead to Joshua Hyslop’s “Winter’s Night.” The ambience is vibrant, and i’m pretty sure all is well in this world–thanks to the smoldering hearth.

Family Lights

The warm insouciance of bloodlines for Christmas calls us back to that smelly old rickety ranch style (why don’t they fix the porch, that’d be so easy?).

Donna Lewis describes such striking milestones on her way home to “Christmas Lights” i’m dreaming of an allegorical journey to the land beyond death. Woof, that’s strange pop.

Shorty Garrett gets down home with his call to “Keep Those Candles Burnin’.” Just like in those old Motel 6 commercials this bouncy blues pop recommends a beacon for the delayed to get home.

“Leave the Lights on for Me” croons Joseph Hollister on his way with a promise and an alt-pop prayer. Aww, he’s such a good boy.

Home Lights

You know it’s home for Christmas when the lights are up. It’s the best.

Old Dog Orchestra has some fun garage pop with “2010 Lights,” stirring up all those reminiscences and past loves and stuff back home.

Garage bluegrass (?) from Paul Baribeau hangs out in his childhood basement and gets weird, until he enjoys those “Christmas Lights.” They just might slow that racing rhythm down.

Happy Lights

Sometimes lights around the holiday evokes big goofy grins. It’s one of the grandest secondary features of the season.

Patrick Connell just loves the “Christmas Lights.” He can’t stop banging that sentiment out on his folk guitar, so ya gotta believe!

Slowing down the sentiment, Candace and Michael believe all they need are the “Christmas Lights.” It’s like a reflective walk down a beautifully decorated street at Christmas. Lovely alt-pop.

Jewel’s got a strange alt-pop with “Blue Crystal Glow.” Her poetry tends to just list image fragments. Still, ethereal.

More aggressively alt-rock, Dreams So Real find their understated joy in “Red Lights (Merry Christmas).” No irony was harmed in the making of this song.

Secular Lights

Sometimes the light of Christmas is the means of getting through the darkest time of the year.

Darlene Como takes us across the galaxy to get us to the experimental oddity of “Christmas Eve by Candle Light.” I’m a little in the dark, here.

Drum gospel from Canticles of Light evokes a spiritual calling to home, hope, and hep-ness. “Light is Returning” is for that time of year, but that that particular church. Dig it.

Guiding Lights

Sometimes the light of Xmas isn’t JC born precisely, it’s something more nebulous. Believer’s choice.

Gordon Dills says it is GOD when grassroots tinkering over the tune “Christmas Candle (God’s Gift of Light).” But he is so slyly faith-based without name-dropping any saviors that i’ll include him here.

Laurie Berkner also bypasses that church/state line, so her kidsong “Christmas Lights” can be sung in schools without the kids legally praying. (Watch out for the fun-ness of her behind-the-scenes epilogue.)

“Light a Candle” is a song of giving and brotherhood and metaphor. Avalon does this pop with heavy gospel overtones.

“Light a Light” from Melissa Etheridge sings about a season of change. This secularism with holy symbolism has got my head on a swivel. But it’s potent and pretty folk pop.

Prayer Lights

We like to aim our prayers upward, but God’s everywhere right? Must be that glowing gaseous center of the solar system that acts as a relay station or sumpin.

“Every Light that Shines at Christmas” is the shouty gospel rafter raiser we’ve been expecting. Ernie Haase & Signature Sound add country rock rhythms to keep us salivatin’. Praise wattage!

Truth wants you to “Light a Christmas Candle” with their sax-driven country pop in order to honor, you know, everything.

The Robert Shaw Chorale ups the church factor with “Break Forth, O Beauteous Heavenly Light.” This is probably just that star we discussed last month, but I dig the part about putting Satan in his place with the light. Bazinga!

Kathleen Mikkelson alt-sermonizes with “Light Broke Through,” a strangely cynical take on doubters when the lights came on Christmas morning. Just look, everyone!

Manger Lights

Some awful Purdy music sees God-as-Man as light, especially around the holidays. We won’t sample every song which praises the big luminescence (which is a whole lotta the hymnal), but let’s tip that bushel and see a bit.

Point of Grace (feat. John David Webster) replaces Jesus with illumination in “Let There be Light” a showstopper of pop gospel.

“Candlelight Carol” mentions fires and stars and candles, so it’s taking the light of the Lord variously seriously. Mary Chapin Carpenter does this best with gentle folk observations.

Of the many, many “Light of the Stable” renditions I prefer the mighty grace of Emmy Lou Harris. That’s power folk music.

First Lights

Fiat Lux may be confused for God himself. Among first lines of books, it’s a lovely enigma and can be taken many ways. But Christmas is so dark, lights are called for. The birth of Mr. Christ might call for the lights.

One of the well known lights are carried by a couple French girls to announce the Nativity to the town (don’t tell Herod!). “Bring a Torch, Jeanette, Isabella” is a fair tune of some centuries’ standing, and probably does better in the French with lyrics. I enjoy Sufjan Stevens‘s whispered telephone call, as well as LA’s Carnival Art’s early ’90s rollicking populist near-punk (which seems about right, even with the Whoville bit at the end).

“The Four Lights of Advent” is a light, airy kids’ instructional tune from Mary Thienes Schunemann about the ancient Xmas celebration of flaming on the Sundays leading up to 12/25. Candles are fun!