Stereogum describes these folks as an Appalachian supergroup, in that it's comprised of members of Sylvan Esso and Daughter of Swords, bands from the great Southeast of America, and they dropped this single in 2019. It's a simple, unadorned cover of the popular Irving Berlin classic featuring only guitar and voice, or voices when the harmonies kick in. Independent audio of this is here.
Somehow I missed this way back in the day. Mr. Eurythmics himself dropped four Christmas songs on Twitter, for free, in 2009. This is the only one of that group of songs that's still easily accessible as far as I can see. Feel free to update me on this.
Novelty mavens need no introduction to the creators of the epic novelty classic "Fish Heads," though they might not know the duo has persisted making music to the modern day. I discovered this through the Demented Punk website, thinking this was new for the season, but it appears this has been available digitally since 2018, and DP appears to have acquired the rights to hardcopy distribution, including special collectible packages. Anyway, what we have here is not hard to figure out; it's novelty music across a wide swath of genres designed to elicit some holiday giggles. The title, and the opening song "It's Christmas in Lumania," are both derived from Art and Artie's fictional home country, and no surprise, fish heads are on the menu. "Horny at the Holidays" is a hip-hop parody, "Down By Candy Cane Lane" is a ludicrously downbeat version of a holiday song, "Why Mommy, Why Do You Cry?" is an over-the-top melodramatic ballad, and the Barneses break out the ukeleles for "Santa's Gone On Strike," presumably because of the surfeit of bad news in the world, and "Jesus Is Groovy," which you could sneak into a Christian camp singalong and nobody would notice until it was too late. "It's Christmas Time and I Am Not With You" is more poppy, though they sing it in the same arch voices they use for the funnier material, "The Angel of Death is Near," sung to "Good King Wenceslas," is self-explanatory, "I Am a Flying Reindeer" is a mid-tempo rocker about the critters who bring Santa his Uber, "Christmas Is Coming Better Start Running" has a touch of Wild Man Fischer about it (no surprise, they produced a couple of records with him), and "Silent Night Holy Newt" is the classic carol done in a portentous arrangement that evolves into a bit of free association lyrically. The Barneses make sure not to bogart their style to just Christmas, with the minor-key "Hanukkah at Our House" and the jazzy "Kwanzaa's Here Again." And they remake Bill Mumy's "I've Got Some Presents For Santa," though there's no female voice taking the lead this time, thereby amping up the dementia quotient by a lot. If you buy the hardcopy -- CD or vinyl -- there's a bonus track, "Santa Claus Is a Martian." I'm lukewarm on this, as there's no mic-drop moments of the kind that make classic novelties. Like, say, "Fish Heads." But I will say if you're willing to listen to this in the way people used to listen to new records, you might just find this twisted but enjoyable.
This dropped right before Christmas 2019, and not being much of a hip-hop maven, it took a bit of research to discover that this is the rapper's fourth Christmas collection, after East Atlanta Santa in 2014, East Atlanta Santa 2: The Night GuWop Stole X-Mas in 2015, and The Return of East Atlanta Santa in 2016. I judge hip-hop based on whether a song or an album gets my attention without my having to know anything historical about the artist, and that's where Gucci loses me; there's a bunch of things that clearly link back to other recordings he's made or his personal history. I'll point out a few songs from this that stuck out to me, like "Jingle Bales Intro," the dancehall-reggae influenced "Drummer," the ballad "Snow" that rides over top of a wildly mutated sample of a Boyz 2 Men song, "Slide," and "Time Flies By." You might also like the "12 Days of Christmas," which is transmuted into the world of drug dealing, and even hip-hop can't resist throwing in a kid-sung number, "WWGD Outro," even though it, and the rest of the album, is wildly explicit -- something I won't hold against it or I'd have to delete at least half the punk rock entries from this site. (There's a clean version.)
Jane's a California singer-songwriter and this 2018 number is that state's sunshine pop-rock sound carried over to the holiday. It's all about how Mrs. Claus's contribution to the holiday is important but overlooked -- the oldest story in the world, of course. But no worries, Jane finds her efforts worthy of a "double-Jack" at the end of the night. Pour one out for yourself while you're at it, Jane.
As long as there are progressive rock artists still active out there in the world, there will be new albums of prog rock music. Yes, that's true of literally every non-hipster-oriented genre of music, but prog especially is a genre that folks dismissed utterly in the wake of the 70s punk revolution despite the fact that the active fanbase for this music never really went away. (As someone who has been thinning out his vinyl collection by going to record shows, I find that these events tend to attract prog fans as much as those for any other genre of music.) So here we are in 2019 with this collection of prog rock Christmas music for your delectation. One caveat: Detailed information about this release is at a premium, so I can't swear that all of these performances are new to this collection, but since I don't immediately recognize any of them, I'm going to act as if they are fresh performances. Jon Davison opens with a cover of Chris Squire's "Run With the Fox," Kasim Sulton offers the ballad "Christmas Lights," Steve Morse does an ensemble guitar arrangement of "Carol of the Bells," Annie Haslam performs "12 Days of Christmas," Billy Sherwood and Patrick Moraz do Sir Paul's "Wonderful Christmastime," and Martin Turner's performance of ELP's "I Believe in Father Christmas" works as a tribute to the late Greg Lake. Leslie Hunt & Robin McAuley offer their version of "Fairytale of New York," Sonja Kristina does a suitably churchy version of "O Come All Ye Faithful," Focus's Thijs Van Leer breaks out his flute on "A Christmas Song," Geoff Downes changes very little about "Linus & Lucy," Nik Turner and Simon House take instrumental liberties with "Silent Night," Malcolm McDowell (yes, the actor) does a dramatic reading of "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch," and the late John Wetton tops off the proceedings with his version of John & Yoko's "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)." While the selection of artists is catnip for prog fans, I would point out that nearly all these performances would appeal to fans of conventional pop rock of the 70s and 80s, as there are no selections over six minutes long and there are almost no exhibitions of instrumental prowess at the expense of melody and rhythm. Check it for yourself.
Last year I discovered the Taste of Christmas series, and a new edition of this collection became available this year. To reiterate, Alice Cooper supports a foundation that gives music instruction to at-risk youth, and they put on Christmas concerts and get to record Christmas albums like this one. I'm giving the Apple For the Teacher Award to the group Dragons in the Desert for their repurposing of a big hit by the school's benefactor, "School's Out For Christmas." Another eye-opener from this collection is "Funky Funky Christmas" by Mellowpshychodelicculture, which is a hard-rock cover of a song by the obscure soul group Electric Jungle from the 1970s. The Homestretch does a rock-inflected Americana version of "Santa Looked A Lot Like Daddy," John Caufield does a straight "Blue Christmas," Paige June takes a singer-songwriter approach to "Santa Baby," as does Ciara Cisneros on "Please Come Home for Christmas," and Sundai goes grungy on "Mr. Heatmiser." There appears to be a few originals on here, like "This Christmas Day" by Sun Kissed, "Christmas Toes" by Phoebe, and "No Need to Deck the Hall" by Between the Dark. Some selections are gentle ballads like "O Holy Night" by Sophie Dorsten, "Mary Did You Know" by Sammi Martinez, and "Have Yourself a Merry little Christmas" by Sophia Humbert, while the rest are 70s-style hard rock like "The Grinch" by Undecided Youth and "Mary's Boy Child" by Conrad Varela. This is a solidly listenable collection, especially if your tastes run to 70s rock. UPDATE: Stubby wrote in to mention that Dragons in the Desert didn't originate "School's Out For Christmas" as implied above. A group called Suite 88 recorded it for a previous Pudding LP in 2012, and that it probably was played live at one of the Pudding Christmas concerts prior to that.
