"A Very Merry Christmas," Lisa Mychols & Super 8 (Jem)

If I didn't declare Lisa to be the power pop queen of Christmas music in previous installations of this humble blog, I might as well have, given the glowing review I gave to her 1990s holiday album Lost Winter's Dream. Over time she's added more Christmas tunes to her resume, via the Hi-Fi Christmas Party compilations series and volume 2 of Rodney Bingenheimer's Santa's Got a GTO series, but I've not heard much since then, which is my fault as she's got several recent Christmas singles out on the market. Starting with the one featured here, 2021's "A Very Merry Christmas" just blasts out of your speakers with all the presence of 60s girl group pop rock and puts a smile on your face. Turns out I overlooked 2020's double-sided smash, "Winter Is Here" backed with "In Love With Love," the former a folky jangle-popper and the latter an uptempo rocker with Beatlesque guitar work, and 2019's "Ringing Bells on Christmas Day," a fine toe-tapper that reminds me a little of the Go-Gos. All these songs belong in the collections of determined power pop Christmas fans. UPDATE: Just discovered that Lisa had another Christmas song in 2020, "Christmas Will Be Just Another Lonely Day," a Spectoresque midtempo ballad that snatches the bridge from "Then I Kissed Her." For some reason, this one's only on Bandcamp.