Category: folk

Life After X-love ending

What of the love that wanes, a casualty of the Christmas drama? Is it so hard to lose both the spirit of giving and the highlights of sharing? Or is it all one big bad?

It could just be time to leave. Sun June sings “Christmas is Over” with so little spirit, and nothing left to say. Just going away. Sluggish folk pop.

Best breakup excuse is the (lack of) quality of the gift-giving. An oft-featured chorale Xmas antidote, “The Twelve Days After Christmas,” is here given all the highbrow comedy cracking up Cynthia Lemen & Cool Lemon Jazz can bring to bear. See what they did with their parody….

2nd best excuse is met someone else: The Thneeds club rock a breakup over a mall Santa. Yet “The Night After Christmas” is clever and hopeful from the clever angry left-behind guy. Hats off to the chins-up survivors.

Megg is a mess “3 Days After Christmas.” Bangin’ pop details all the lies, outcries, and whys of the romantic crash and burn. Watch out!

“There in Bristol After Christmas” by Coming Soon (feat. Howard Hughes, Dave Tattersall) orders a side of sad to go with their diner delicacy of breakup. Grunge-y folk ballad.

King Everything is “Unfollowing You After Christmas.” So there. Amateurishly half-baked more than garage rock.

Rockin’ the warble, Scott Ryan cries that she packed up and lefty him and now it’s “The Day After Christmas.” It’s all broken candy canes and missing carols. Pretty pop, raw feelings.

Or how ’bout, how ’bout this–just forget the whole thing. Earwig is not waiting for you, not this time. Emo-boy slow pop (it gets mad later) tells you what it’s gonna be “Next Christmas.” In yo’ tinsely face!

Life After X-what’s on

You know what i think is so wrong with the after-Christmas calendar times? The songs are gone!!

The evolution of Christmas song play is documented by adorable folky ukester Kate Harrington as an opening to the later decay in “Post Christmas Song.” (Spoiler alert: EVERYTHING SUX!)

“Christmas Time is Over” heralds The Bent Fender Band, don’t have to play those tunes no more. Fair rocking for the tired.

Molp gets right to it: there’s no songs the “Day After Christmas.” Sweet folk soaring makes it true.

Life After X-yea

With the passing of Christmas, perhaps it is time to open a can of whoopee. I mean, finally, right? Woo-hoo.

Skavengers have caught the spirit of the season so hard that “An After Christmas Song” celebrates that perpetual high. Infectious Filipino ska pop. (Jim Sarthou claims to have originated this ditty, but slows its roll to the point of dreariness.)

With barely a spring in their step KC and The Sunshine Band wave in the ‘fun’ with their “After Christmas Song.” Funeral pop.

Half surf rock, half Beatles throwback “Merry After-Christmas” falters over sped up chipmunk vocals and clumsy tempo. But The Spongetones mean well. I’m just suffering doldrums this music can’t lift me from.

Bill Berry yanks the folk rock out from Dylan with “‘Twas the Night After Christmas“–an after hours party for Santa and company. They have no scruples, those unharnessed reindeer. Damn, nasty.

Life After X-oops

Perhaps the first thing you see the next morning post-X is the big mess.

Homer & Jethro tee off the humor of chaos from 1968 with “The Night After Christmas.” Rollicking redneck fun crashin’ ’round the cottage.

Violence erupted all over Entre-Knobs (feat. Rob Boyd)’s homefront in “Christmas is Over.” Guns may have been involved in this ska-pop dance number.

Swedish Formula One driver Slim Borgudd can’t seem to find you in the tangle of gifts, leftovers, or decorations. “Talking After Christmas Blues” builds in a non-Scandinavian moroseness that may unnerve you. Jangly jazz blues.

Talky blues-lite from Dashboard Hula Girls observes the mess detachedly in “The Day After Christmas.” Not much more to it than that.

Only a gently strewn floor sets the scene of “The Day After Christmas” by John Pollard. Whimsical folk nostalgia for two days before.

Throwing out turkey bones, beer bottles, and faraway friends Bill Lloyd uses “The Day After Christmas” as a time for renewal. One man’s trash is another man’s garbage. Hard strummin’ folk.

Life After X–inconceivable

Can we begin to fathom the world when Christmas has left us? Poets and troubadours take this challenge.

January Zero can’t find the way back home “After Christmas.” This cacophony of coffeehouse pop waves its metaphors proudly to capture this (lack of) spirit.

Annie Lin is sorry she didn’t pick you up ate the airport in time in “The Day After Christmas,” a bangin’, unplugged rocker of a poetic traipse over mood swings and urban expectations.

Gar Cox goes Celtic folk epic with the drinking and head scratching all over “Too Late for Christmas.” This synesthesia of images and smells and despair needs a Joycean college class to explicate. I like that.

Life After X–what is time?

As i post this, Twenty Twenty-one begins. But not when i write it, nor likely when you read it. Time is a factor of our perception. Everything just is. Of course if you want chemistry or physics to work, follow the x-axis.
So, when i say Songs About After Christmas: it can mean the burnout, the hangover, the mess… or it can mean the return to normalcy… or even the anticipation of Next Xmas.

Let’s start with a continuity check. If we are the only animal that can anticipate the unseen yet to be, can it be After Christmas before Christmas? Student Union (feat. Zak Stegman) applies rock country to caution “It’s Gone Before You Know It.” Either this will slow you down to savor-speed, or will be just one more thing to worry about.

Perhap the numericalization of the calendar limits the moods. “Merry ’til Christmas is Over” is real Celtic caroling from Dave Brooks & Bernard Wrigley. No judgment.

Whether the chicken came before the egg or vice versa, we can agree “Christmas Comes Four Days After Winter Solstice.” Salvador Buttersworth gets lost in the time loop of this folk masterpiece, which may teach you calendrical skills–or how fast you can reach the mute button.

Wait for the Depth

Perhaps the top of my checklist for what a great song needs to impress me is… layers. Nothing too shallow for my wintry mood, nay nay. If there’s a twelve page paper needed to explicate the musical entry, i’m half-gone already. What do i mean–?

Perhaps tangential, “Waiting for the Snow” by Of Monsters & Men portentously takes on human industry, existence, and love. Good stuff to listen to while looking for Christmas music.

A revisitation of ‘Baby, It’s Cold’ “Can’t Wait for Christmas” is a sneaky electro-garage tipsy-doodle of a song. Jamir Fork keeps the listener off balance with his aggressive whimsy, all the while charming with his clumsy metaphor.

The great works of art are just out of reach of our understanding, yet so close as to seem embraceable. Just when you think you get it, whoops! What IS that?! Alison Sudol’s lullaby “Christmas will be Waiting” is the folk pop to soothe and ease to sleep. But it’s plaintive yearning is so musically loose and fun (is it that tambourine??), i don’t know how to feel–except with the goosebumps. Brava.

Wait for the Squeal

Getting hypoxic with suspense can lead to high pitched keening, which, any other time of the year is annoying but just before Xmas, is parentally preferred. Go figure. Squeak it up, singers!

Light and airy kid frolicsome, Doug & Deb rock the uke for “I Just Can’t Wait ’til Christmas.” It’s nearly ragtime in its earnest energy.

Perky a bit more than the music allows, “I Can Hardly Wait for Christmas” is Michael Gurley’s entry in the sing-along easy rock family time glee.

Dean Kelly switches up the Britpop to punk pogo with “Can’t Wait Until Christmas.” Catchy as Covid, innit?

Kenn Rowell & The Baghdaddies up the folk rock with shouted singing about the good old times in “I Can Hardly Wait ’til Christmas.” Not earbusting, but leaping and goofing like it’s okay.

Wait for Fun

When is Christmas music fun? Like a new boyfriend, when it’s about something! Songs that just want you to like them so they do everything they’re supposed to are predictable, calculating monsters! What did i ever see in you?! Boo hoohoo.

Olivier Deparis may think he’s in a Disney movie, but the banging of kitchen utensils for a timpani about Mom and Dad cooking makes “Can’t Wait for Christmas” a surprise rising slightly above common kidsong fodder. Bit o’ fun.

When an Australian album proclaims itself as Dance Around the Lounge Room, i give pause. Mick McIvor starts with Jesus as Elvis then tutors the tots in patience. “You Gotta Wait for Christmas” is unusually (and barely) fun.

A gay agenda is usually loud and proud, so “Just Can’t Wait for Christmas” by Sheena Rose is no drag, but fabulous pop. Perhaps a bit measured in tempo, still a solid 6 on the fun meter.

“Waiting for Snow” is breathy folk from John McCutcheon. A welcome break from the same old entry into our category. Poetic, pretty, fun.

A Near Thing -16

I gravitate toward honest folk music, the casual ballad of the working man. When it’s HONEST, mind ye. Agendas are fine, but selling out isn’t.

So i’ve a bone to pick with Terry Welton’s “When It’s Nearly Christmas.” The Roger Whittaker prettiness of his breathy reaching and tinkly tunesmithery don’t back me up, much. But the giddiness for the holidays is suddenly communion with Christ–snuck that in, o you proselytizer of nuance.

Jack Terrell Clift, with a corrido approach, tells a tale of nativity with his folk epic “It Being Nearly Christmas Time.” This is an E-ticket ride that lifts and separates. Might be a bit tearful here.