Christmas Is All It's Quacked Up To Be, The Waddles (Clockwise)

It seems like the novelty recording sector has suffered more from the Internet than the rest of the recording industry. When every wise guy with a webcam can throw together some parody lyrics, pick up a guitar and make a video, which then goes on YouTube, you pretty much have to be Weird Al if you want to eventually be compensated for your efforts. And if you do go the full hardcopy route, the expectations are going to be high. Which brings us to The Waddles, a quartet of "ducks" performing 10 popular Christmas standards and one original, which of course is the title song of this 2011 album. They've tucked into the battle with a running series of videos at their webbed-feet-site that set up the "band" back story, including the escapades of their former drummer Pete Worst (get it?). Another feather in the band's collective cap is the attractive packaging of the physical disc, the art for which also looks good in an iTunes cameo. The title song is a reasonably good novelty tune with sentimental lyrics, and the other songs on the disc are familiar Christmas tunes as sung by a quartet of ducks. To get the most out of this, you'll want to check out the videos, which cover ground that isn't represented on the disc. This will probably go over best with young kids, though we typically don't cover the kids' music sector here at Mistletunes. Click on the disc to grab it from Amazon; they'll put it on your bill.