Hail the Jolly Christmas Monkey, various artists (Green Monkey)

This Northwest indie record label unveils its 10th Christmas label compilation for 2019, and they've even backstopped it with another collection that collects the best tracks from the previous nine compilations. Like the previous nine, the new one paints a holiday mood from a wide variety of styles, though mostly in the rock 'n roll realm. Things kick off promisingly with Ben London's "Vinyl Christmas," a rollicking boogie shuffle about record fans' holiday wishes, and Duane Hibbard cues up a pretty faithful cover of "Wonderful Christmastime." Cabeza takes a 70s hard rock turn on "It's a Hard Time," Jon Davis takes a few cues from "Strawberry Fields Forever" on the trippy "Psychedelic Christmas," Levi Fuller goes folk-rock on the anti-consumer "Enough Stuff," Olivia Bloch offers a nicely poppy "I'm Going Back Home For Christmastime," and label honcho Tom Dyer combines with Joe Cason for the quirky "The Geese." Richard Stuverud offers "Snowing In Frisco" as a Part One-Part Two in the fashion of those extra-long songs cut to fit on vinyl singles going back to "What'd I Say." In this case Part One is a dolorous piano ballad and Part Two is an upbeat rocker. Steve Fisk breaks out his Pro Tools setup to do a hip-hop deconstruction of "The Little Drummer Boy," and Rendition stumps my high school Latin with the folky-classical "Verbum Caro Factum Est" (The Word Made Flesh), which as it turns out actually is an antique carol; I learn something new every day. The Elftones perform a midtempo rocker called "Christmas Without You," Utterance Tongue goes long with "Cheznuts," a semi-industrial sounding instrumental based on "The Christmas Song (Chestnuts)," and Wendi Dunlap goes power pop on "Christmas Eve." Ed Portnow and Jeff Kelly do "Baby It's Cold Outside," yeah it's two guys, not that there's anything wrong with that, and Jim of Seattle, who previously offered humorous novelties in previous volumes of this series, plays it straight with a jazz piano solo version of "Silent Night" that sneaks in a phrase or two of "Christmastime Is Here." The collection wraps up with "The Brand New Christmas," a funky rocker by Who's This Mystery Band? They're serious -- the label doesn't know who submitted this tape that has been laying around the office for a few years.