UPDATE: The album formerly known as Too Much Christmas is now called Ruin Christmas, with a much tighter playlist consisting of the best 14 songs already mentioned in the below review and the Life Without Chairs entry. Click the album art to grab it from iTunes. End update. Hey, remember last year when we hipped you to an all-original Christmas album by a band called Life Without Chairs? Good times, a strong power-pop outing with snarky holiday lyrics. Since then, things have changed around quite a bit, and Life Without Chairs is now known as Proper Animals. Recording fresh Christmas tunes appears not to have been held up in the transition, for now we have the above-mentioned album for 2010 containing 25 songs, still all originals, although five of the original album's songs -- "Song For a Christmas Party," "Santa," "It's Christmas Again," "Christmas Ain't For Crying," and "A Gift As Nice as You" -- are carried over to the new collection. The newer songs are more hard rock-thrashy than the Life Without Chairs songs, with that double-time drumming featuring frequently. Among the new songs are "Lonely Hearts In the Snow," a holiday dating song; "In Herod's Wake," a double-time thrash through the back story of the Nativity; "More Christmas Please," in which too much of a good thing isn't enough; "Another December Day," in which stalking a girlfriend doesn't result in good news; "Christmas Is Here," in which the celebratory competes with the snark; "Lovely Is This Day/42nd Street," in which "lovely" segues to "lonely" in the vicinity of the street in question, a tune that almost qualifies as musical theatre; and "Ruining Christmas," a hard rock take on doing what the title suggests. Overall, the wit of the original album remains, and the performances of the new songs are strong. Whether it's "too much Christmas" I will leave to the reader, but, well, this is not a site where that proposition comes up much, is it?
Ruin Christmas, Proper Animals (self-issued)
UPDATE: The album formerly known as Too Much Christmas is now called Ruin Christmas, with a much tighter playlist consisting of the best 14 songs already mentioned in the below review and the Life Without Chairs entry. Click the album art to grab it from iTunes. End update. Hey, remember last year when we hipped you to an all-original Christmas album by a band called Life Without Chairs? Good times, a strong power-pop outing with snarky holiday lyrics. Since then, things have changed around quite a bit, and Life Without Chairs is now known as Proper Animals. Recording fresh Christmas tunes appears not to have been held up in the transition, for now we have the above-mentioned album for 2010 containing 25 songs, still all originals, although five of the original album's songs -- "Song For a Christmas Party," "Santa," "It's Christmas Again," "Christmas Ain't For Crying," and "A Gift As Nice as You" -- are carried over to the new collection. The newer songs are more hard rock-thrashy than the Life Without Chairs songs, with that double-time drumming featuring frequently. Among the new songs are "Lonely Hearts In the Snow," a holiday dating song; "In Herod's Wake," a double-time thrash through the back story of the Nativity; "More Christmas Please," in which too much of a good thing isn't enough; "Another December Day," in which stalking a girlfriend doesn't result in good news; "Christmas Is Here," in which the celebratory competes with the snark; "Lovely Is This Day/42nd Street," in which "lovely" segues to "lonely" in the vicinity of the street in question, a tune that almost qualifies as musical theatre; and "Ruining Christmas," a hard rock take on doing what the title suggests. Overall, the wit of the original album remains, and the performances of the new songs are strong. Whether it's "too much Christmas" I will leave to the reader, but, well, this is not a site where that proposition comes up much, is it?
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