Let's Stay Up All Night Playing Christmas Songs, The Christmas Cards (Fake Fir)

The blurb says this London band was "formed by members of indie-pop darlings The Postcards and lo-fi teenage sensations Father." OK then. They got a commission to participate in a compilation and couldn't shake the holiday spirit until they did a whole album's worth of songs. And so we get this for 2017. Soundwise, it's slapdash unpolished power pop with a fair number of covers, but they also managed to write some tunes for this too. Familiar carols include a middle tempo "Christmas Time Is Here," garage band renditions of "Little Drummer Boy" and "The Christmas Song (Chestnuts)," a sludgy "Silent Night," an unadorned voice and guitar version of "O Holy Night," and a fairly sporty take on the Little Eva chestnut "I Wish You a Merry Merry Christmas." Among the other tunes, "It's Christmas Time" tells the story of Mary as though it was a teenage love song (well, it kinda was), "Oh Santa Claus!" is a call for the jolly elf to help the singer get out of her funk, "It's Christmas Time Again" is a nice midtempo take on the sights and sounds of the holiday, "Skiing In the Snow" is uptempo and self-explanatory, "Wish You a Merry Christmas" is a wistful ballad, "Winter/Christmas" takes an almost Jefferson Airplane approach to the material, "Jing-Jing-A-Ling" is their uptempo song about Christmas bells, "Merry Christmas Darling (And a Happy New Year Too) is their late-50s-early-60s semi-doo wop hymn complete with spoken part, and "A Dream For Christmas" has the feel of a single. Interestingly enough, they released it as a single with a second mix of "Dream" and the song "Holiday Hymn," which isn't on this album. Pop over to Bandcamp and check it out for yourself.