Year-round Yuletide oddities
Somewhere around Christmas look out for “The Snow.” Seth Rhodes plays pretty pop about watching All the people on 51st street Our eyes covered by an ice sheet. Watch you dance step!
The TV with the 5.1 sound makes it hard to relate to family all trapped together for the holidays. But Sam Newton trudges out a reluctant, dutiful “Merry Christmas” with notes of country in his pop.
If it were “Christmas Every Day,” then it would be 52 weeks in a row–so says the pop music math of SimplePlan. Count on it. And dance to it.
Richard Sponaugle can complain and cuss on 12/26, ‘cuz it’s “52 weeks Until Christmas.” Straining folk/pop with agenda.
Amanda Shires trembles when she gets “A Real Tree This Year.” She’s been waiting the whole 52 weeks for this. And–whew–it smells like menthol and Old Spice. Countrified pop with some funky honky tonk. In her companion piece “Gone for Christmas” her list of wants includes fifty two weeks paid vacation. (Uhh, that’s FROM you.)
Mandy Rowden tickles the strings (of a bouzouki??) with her hopeful plan: “Christmas with You.” West 56th Street is too cold for her, so she’ll catch a flight to get there. Melodic. Sweet. Insistent.
Getting colder!
Even when “It’s a Texas Christmas“ it’s sixty-eight in the shade ya’ll. Rock leads and country follows when Demir Demirkan (ft. Lance Keltner) wail.
“Arizona Christmas” is When the weather cools down it’s a biting, chilly 68 degrees. Abby Walker blends folk and pop to cheery ukulele effect.
Pissed off at his own childhood nostalgia, Frontier Ruckus leads us a merry garage chase to “Orion Town 2.” The brass is brassy, the poetic lyrics beat: I-75 is the swallower of Christmas; The gloom of its gladness is night on our shoulders Connecting our sorrows like ponds with an isthmus. Grow up already!
Back onto the same route: I-75 is a dark roadway lined With the wild electricity of the Animal behaviors… Frontier Ruckus backtracks into banjo strummin’ screaming. “Driving Home, Christmas Eve” drives home the melancholia of Christ’s Mass.
“Rudolph Did a Whoopsie on My Rooftop” includes three quarter of a hundred weight of residue. Ivor Biggun does his music hall burlesque with a jazz bent here, and it’s crap-tastic.
A bit off topic, the talky experimental “Comatose Cakes Penguin” deals with the wintry feel of a dangerous flightless bird. ColdmaN5 explains that He takes a lot of naps 75 hours at a time–These aren’t naps; These are comas. There’s even a Xmas part where he decorates his room like a holiday with the dismembered parts of his enemies. It’s the merriest!
Brad Brewer is south of the Georgia line “A Palm Tree at Christmas.” This country folk is homespun and home-recorded. Kinda rocks, though.
Also deeply South (and warm) Craig Croker Jr. gently strums and folks and pop of “It’s a LowCountry Christmas.” I just about smell it….
Eighty degrees in The Keys is the least of Grandpa C’s problems. Featured in The Christmas Workshop Band Jingles’s “White Christmas Dream,” the rapping oldster is stuck in a horrible holiday loop. Don’t let it catch you. But, if it does, Pass the beer.
Also Floridian, Artie N croons the pop “Xmas in the Sun,” a Calypso-adjacent chill party. Not sure why he’s pretending Mexico–guess 80 isn’t warm enough.
On the other coast, “Boost Christmas” is much more Caribbean (?!?) from SUPERCHARGED (feat. Kwanza Jones & Matty). Pop bubblegum party spew.
Palm Beach is the high pitched pop squealing second-best for Kara Colvin “‘Til I’m Home.” If you can’t be where you want to be be where you are… i guess.
Chill out, it’s Christmas music. Not too hot now….
They say it’s gonna be a hundred degrees, worries the incarcerated narrator in Pual Kelly’s “How to Make Gravy.” But it’s Australia, so that tracks. This rocking apology for not being there then closes with the promise he’ll pay them all back by making the gravy later. So… desperate.
“It’s a COVID Christmas” is a home spun parody of ‘Here Comes’ without much oomph. The wit glistens at a hundred degrees and maskne, but Payton Marie is just a kid having fun.
Kylie Minogue (with Dannii Minogue) is ready to dance and love everybody even if it is “100 Degrees.” That’s the thing about Christmas. Don’t have to be white. ‘Kay? Diva pop.
Matthew Milia’s sad silly folk pop “Christmas from a Deadmall” belabors his non-relationship with you, a pretend thing like those failing shopping centers around Lansing and Troy. He burrows into his not-so-merry quarters listening to Detroit’s own WINC 101.3, where classic rock is from the ’90s. Poetic epic.
Loves me some “Heat Miser.” (Well, not the Harvey Fierstein verzh….) But been there done that. Let’s try the fantastical rap reimagining of Promise (feat. Robby Atkins): “The Misers.” Oddly the hot one is now female. Still loves it one hundred and one degrees. Faboo.
Rustic set, but country folk pop–“Tangier Christmas” fiddles up a snowstorm, then stops by the barn-like church for Rows of wooden pews and song hymnals Turn to page 101 and sing along. Down home fun.
I’m on the 101 and I look at my phone–Traffic is delayed, is the resigned slomo pop cry of NVR enuff in “Christmas This Year” (as in: I won’t be at…). He’s leaving L.A. at Xmas, which is tough ‘cuz you are my drug. Guess he’s going cold turnpike.
Charlotte Buckley is all broken up about being broken up with you around Christmas. Play 101.7, On the FM That’s my only friend, she moans in soft pop teary-eyed malaise. “Manhattan (A Glimpse Into the Future)” is the kind of music that’s about Christmas but not christmassy. Cool gloom.