A Very Cherry Christmas 2, various artists (Cherryade Music)

Following on from the first disc, this second collection from 2006 features Cherryade artists and their confederates, this time going Christmas across the board. The Pocket Gods kick things off with "Jombal Bells," a play on their own song "Jombal Party," slapping together any number of holiday readymades into a fun disc opener. The Beatnik Filmstars give us "Ho Ho Ho (A Bloody Merry Corporate Xmas)," a primitive-sounding broadside against commercialism, and Candy Panic Attack's "On the Dole at Christmas" is an equally grungy pop take from a slacker's point of view, and The Girl From Headquarters offers up a sinister-sounding "Unwanted Presents." Paul Hawkins' mediocre voice fails to detract from the reggae-fied "Getting a Divorce For Christmas," a bit of tongue-in-cheek melodrama that is fun but goes on a bit too long. True Adventures' girl-boy pop shuffle "What the Hell" is nicely disarming, with just the slightest taste of Violent Femmes to it. "The Last Noel" by Life With Bears is an electro-pop talk-sing reminiscent of a low-budget Pet Shop Boys. Captain Polaroid offers a rare "Until Boxing Day" take on the 26th, invoking a bit of Velvet Underground along the way. Two bands break the all-original-songs barrier on this collection: Zoltan Kodaly School For Girls does an instrumental of Jona Lewie's "Stop the Cavalry" and Dawn of the Replicants nicely grunges up Sir Paul's "Wonderful Christmastime." There's also a CD Extra component with "A Ghostly Tale" on mp3, but it didn't seem to do much else on my Mac. There are a fair number of more experimental sounding items on this disc, but there's enough good stuff to justify the low price of this disc.