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Latest UPDATE: For 2024, the band has reissued this as a 4-CD, 1 Blu-Ray archive collection, which appears to take in almost everything mentioned in the ensuing review, although the DVD included as part of the earlier reissue does not appear to be on offer. END UPDATE. The often-maligned progressive rock act of the 1970s never actually went away, continuing to record straight through any number of pop music fads. And this is a good time to note this site has been remiss in not noting the group has actually had a number of holiday tunes over time - "Christmas Song" from Living in the Past, "Ring Out Solstice Bells" from Songs for the Wood, "Jack Frost and the Hooded Crow" from an 80s single B-side, and "Another Christmas Song" from the 90s album Rock Island. UPDATE: Tom Rombouts notes a performance of "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" on the 1978 live album Bursting Out. All of these tunes are on this newly recorded 2003 album, along with the Bach instrumental "Bouree," first played by the group on the album Stand Up. On the other hand, these guys have kept their rock influences at arm's length for quite a while now, and there's very little on this album for rock fans. It's mostly classically oriented pop, a lot of guitar/flute instrumentals with some vocals and a little jazz thrown in from time to time - other than those jazz flourishes, this album wouldn't sound out of place as the background music for a colonial Christmas tableaux in Williamsburg, Va. The 16 tunes include those mentioned above, along with a sprinkling of new originals and a few classics like "Greensleeves," "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen," "We Five Kings" (poetic license there, but it's the same song) and "Holly Herald," a medley of "Holly and the Ivy" and "Hark the Herald Angels Sing." The album was re-released for 2004 in a deluxe package that includes a DVD. Both versions appear to be out of print, but Amazon continues to offer downloads.

The Damaged Goods label remains a mainstay of the British punk scene, and their artists have had a fairly active Christmas life -- indeed, a number of the label's holiday works have featured on Mistletunes in the past. For those who haven't been following the Damaged saga, this collection will bring you up to speed quickly -- and enjoyably. The site has previously reviewed such items as Holly Golightly's "Christmas Tree On Fire," Wild Billy Childish's "Christmas 1979," TV Smith's "Xmas, Bloody Xmas," Goldblade's "City of Christmas Ghosts" featuring Poly Styrene, and Severe's version of "Stop the Cavalry." Add to that the Singing Loins' "Ding Dong Merrily On High," an almost skiffle-like tune that cops from traditional carols; Helen Love's much poppier take on the Ramones' "Merry Christmas (I Don't Wanna Fight Tonight)"; another Holly Golightly song, the sweet ballad "Little Stars," done with the Greenhornes; Cuckooland's punked-out "Silver Bells"; Monkhouse's thrashy "Guinness and Wine," necessary holiday beverages for many; and Buff Medways wraps things up with "Merry Christmas Fritz." Thee Headcoatees are billed as providing their version of the Sonics' "Santa Claus," but my copy came with a different song by the band that has X-rated lyrics and is not about Christmas. I've tipped the label. UPDATE: Damaged Goods has chosen to press this collection on vinyl for 2021. They've rejiggered the playlist, adding The Courettes' "Christmas (I Can Hardly Wait)" to the proceedings. We'll see if they corrected the above-mentioned error with Thee Headcoatees' "Santa Claus."

From 2004, this instrumental group recorded this album in Vancouver, which is appropriate, as this is a collection of West Coast 60s-style instrumentals of familiar Christmas carols. Although you'll hear surf music in this collection, there's also nods to Western swing and Cliff Richards' Shadows in their approach and song selection. "Jingle Bells" and "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," for example, combine swing and bluegrass influences, "Angels On High" has a Joe Meek-Phil Spector flavor about it, "Deck the Halls" throws in just a hint of "Tequila," "We Three Kings" nods to the Animals' version of "House of the Rising Sun," and "Jingle Bell Rock" hews closely to the almost-country sound of the Bobby Helms original. The one left-of-center choice is a cover of The Chessmen's early 1960s hit "Meadowlands," adapted from a Russian folk song. A nice selection of instrumentals. Amazon has it for download and streaming, but hardcopy was scarce at this writing.

I received a number of pointers to this telling me it was a 2020 release, and since I never heard of these guys before this I grabbed it. Turns out it's a reissue of a 2005 album with a couple extra songs, so I'll file this under the 2000s with the site's sorting tools. Nevertheless, if you dig some rockabilly swing, this collection of 17 familiar songs, mostly mid-20th century favorites and a few older classics, will get the dance floor jumping. Fans of big-band jazz will note a number of cues from their favorite songs in that genre, but there's plenty of rock 'n roll in all these tunes too, their version of "Jingle Bells" being a notable example, along with more uptempo takes on "White Christmas," "Silver Bells," "I'll Be Home For Christmas" and "Silent Night." If you haven't encountered this before, now's as good a time as any.

The surf-music subculture just keeps hanging in there year after year, and this Santa Monica-based artist gets the jolly elf to hang 10 for us one more time in 2020. Interestingly, this particular version of the surf beat relies way more on keyboards for its uptempo sound than on guitar. Swing over to Bandcamp for your copy of this digital single. While you're there, note that Lex previously released "Keep Xmas Coming" in 2018 and "Santa's Got a Self-Driving Sleigh" in 2016, more of the same.

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.

This is the 70s singer-songwriter responsible for the ear-worm "On and On," plus a number of other tunes, some of which were even Oscar-nominated. It's a seven-tune EP featuring two originals, "Jingle Holiday," a kids-party tune, and "Rock Little Reindeer," a more swinging take on the Rudolph story. The rest of the tunes are familiar ones: "Jingle Bell Rock," "Let It Snow," "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," "The Christmas Song (Chestnuts)," and "Auld Lang Syne." As it happens, this 2019 EP was previously released in 2002 as Happy Bishmas, and since it slipped my notice back then, well, better late than never.

Prog-rock performer Morse, once of the band Spock's Beard and now of his own eponymous band, strips off the progressive filligree in favor of solid riff-rock with a rap interlude on this 2019 holiday single. He's trying to summon Santa for a December 24 Uber ride on the sleigh, and he's largely successful. Those of you who run screaming from prog need not dodge this one; it's refreshingly straightforward and hooky. I like it. There's no Amazon link, it's apparently only available from Neal's website. While there, Neal apparently teamed with the City On a Hill worship band for a 14-cut Christmas album, all covers, and that too is only available on the site.

The Northwest's biggest conventional rock group just dropped this cover of their hometown heros The Sonics' best known Christmas song for 2019 2002, and it has all the rambunctiousness of the original. I like it and it needs to be in your playlists and mixes as soon as possible. Note that it's from the legendary album Merry Christmas From the Sonics, the Wailers and the Galaxies, which despite its age and general obscurity outside this site remains available as a download from Amazon. UPDATE: I actually did know that Pearl Jam used to release Chrismas songs to their fan club and that this was one of them, but it took Stubby to gently remind me via email of that fact. What happened is that Pearl Jam has dropped ALL that stuff this year for general consumption, holiday and non-holiday alike, which means everybody can now get their hands on this as well as "Someday At Christmas" (2004), "Santa God"/"Jingle Bells" (2007) and "Let Me Sleep (It's Christmas Time)" (1991). That latter song had been on a rarities compilation before this.

Somehow I never knew this existed. Ray Davies did an album covering some of his great Kinks hits with the help of the Crouch End Festival Chorus in 2009, but he included this original, which he had intended to duet with British singing icon Vera Lynn. Instead, ex-girlfriend Chrissie Hynde got the nod after being approached by their daughter Natalie. That the two of them did not maintain contact after the birth of their daughter, and in fact did not appear in the studio together for the recording, puts an interesting edge on the story behind this downbeat holiday tale.

Just recently stumbled on this, from the long-running pop-rock band's 2005 album Something About the Korgis and recently repackaged on the 2012 The Korgis Kollection. It's a sweet pop-rock ballad with the usual holiday pleasantries and plenty of chimes to evoke the season.

This is a 2009 collection of hit-radio-friendly Christmas music, heavy on pop-rock but also including some R'nB, all original tunes. It's widely available but not a lot is known about it, other than that the label, Banshee Music, is better known for doing sports marketing for music. Real rock fans may find this more little-sister-and-mom compatible, but since it appears to be all original tunes it's worthy of a look here. The title song by Blackshire is a strong modern R'nB workout while "My Favorite Holiday" by Rob Dz and D.L.O. is more of a hip-hop thing. Jason Phelps doubles up with a lightly ska'd up "I Love Christmas" and the ballad "Back Up the Chimney," Jessy Moss offers the very nice "What Christmas Means to Me," not the Stevie Wonder classic but not bad, RIck Monroe goes country on "Send Me Home For Christmas" and Altered Five go bluesy on "It's Christmas Time." Seven Williams gets two bites of this collection with the horn-led "Rocking Holiday" and the ballad "On Christmas Day," and our old pal Oh, Hush! has the hardest rocking number, a sort of Killers/Coldplay/U2 homage called "The Perfect Christmas." I'm thinking folks may be able to pick and choose some favorites from this collection, even if the whole thing isn't entirely in their wheelhouse.

Don't know how this site managed to not notice Portland, Ore.'s own Parenthetical Girls, who have been releasing Christmas EPs for more than a decade, if you include their previous incarnation as Swastika Girls. Thoughtful bunch of experimental poppers that they are, they gathered up the first seven years' worth of holiday performances onto a 2010 album available at Bandcamp, 10 songs by their current name plus the full five-song Christmas output of Swastika Girls. The group produces a kind of lo-fi chamber pop that occasionally ranges into the noisier realms, which may be an acquired taste for some. Still, the songwriting is good, and the band exhibits a familiarity with the historic holiday music forms that they weave into their more modern sound. "A Christmas Memory" alludes to the Nativity, "Here's To Nostalgia" is a beautiful guitar piece whose lyrics are a bit impenetrable, "Wait Another Year" offers a lilting melody to carry their "weary voices," "If It's Time For Christmas" kicks off with chimes but adds grungy guitar and synth as it builds, and they go synth-pop, though at a very slow tempo, with the witty "Do You Fear What I Fear?" "Carol of the Season" is a vocal round that plays off, without copying, the more familiar "Carol of the Bells," and they break out the chimes again for "Festive Friends (Forever)." "Last Christmas Part II" is more of a holiday dirge for those with not so many Christmases in their future, "Flowers For Albion" picks up the tempo a bit with literary-sounding lyrics, and they do a nice obscure cover, Sparks' "Thank God It's Not Christmas," sounding reasonably close to the original. The Swastika Girls, being the group's earliest incarnation, is much lower-fi and borderline amateur in execution, but the songs are still kind of interesting. "When It's Time For Christmas" is rendered as a kind of sing-along, "Tinseltown" starts as a round and then breaks out the grungy guitars, "Over and Over Again, Forever" is a deliberately repetitive tribute to the holiday, "Somewhere In My Memory" is a bells-and-synth instrumental, and things wrap up with a doomy cover of "Last Christmas."

This goes all the way back to 2002, sorry I missed it for all these years. This is a Norwegian band specializing in the sounds of American pop and rock music of the 1950s and 60s with the kind of reverence only a European band can exhibit. The 14 songs are mostly covers, kicking off with a lovely 50s take on the Ramones' "Merry Christmas (I Don't Wanna Fight Tonight)" and taking in period-faithful versions of "Santa Claus Is Back In Town," "Santa Bring My Baby Back To Me," "Merry Merry Christmas Baby,", "Run Rudolph Run," "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)," "Santa Baby," and "I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm." "Pretty Paper" gets a slow New Orleans march arrangement. Other songs, probably originals though I couldn't find any credits, include another trip to New Orleans via Jamaica with "Christmas Day," the merengue-flavored "Christmas In July," the Tennessee Two tribute "Dreams Come True," the rockabilly "Christmas Tale" and the closing shuffle "The Moon's Blue Too." Still available from Amazon.

Somehow missed this 2005 single from these guys, a nice upbeat rocking ode to a West Coast holiday. One that's a good bit farther south (California) than their British Columbia home town, but what the heck, we're all about the upbeat rock and the sunshine here, right?

"Ontario's next big thing," according to their Facebook page's quote from a radio host, is a country-fried rock 'n roll band with a couple of albums to their credit. This 2009 song is a more bluesy strut with guest vocalist Ginger being the subject of the song as well as the duet partner. I believe Cool Christmas Songs on Facebook had the video up, which is how I discovered it.

This is an excellent midtempo pop ballad with an unironic holiday greeting for listeners everywhere from this Winnepeg band. It's from 2009 and you can grab it from Amazon.

The Fab Four, a fairly well-known Beatles tribute band, created two full albums of Christmas goodness for 2002 under the titles A Fab Four Christmas and Have Yourself a FAB-ulous Little Christmas for Laserlight, a budget label, but apparently they didn't stay in print long, if the complaints of some fans are anything to go by. A few years ago, the band took matters into their own hands and reissued the two discs in a single wrapper, a clever one too, one that parodies the U.S. version of the Help! album. The Fabs cut a wide swath across the history of the Beatles -- the two CDs, in their original packaging, are even color-coded the same as the famous Beatles 62-66 and 67-70 collections (see below) to tip off committed listeners -- and their vocal impressions, particularly of Paul and John, are pretty authentic. (One might also note the red album has a strong resemblance to Beatles 1.) Some of the more inventive arrangements include "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" via "When I'm 64" and "Honey Pie," "Silent Night" as "Norwegian Wood," "The Christmas Song" as "Here, There and Everywhere," "Good King Wenceslaus" sung to "Tell Me What You See" and "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" as "Within You Without You." An extra treat on Fabulous is "Dear Santa," a cut from Ringo Starr's Christmas album done to the arrangement of "Oh! Darling." Now that the band has this at its website, there should be no more complaints -- go grab it. Happy Krimble, indeed. UPDATE: Or you could click on the Hark! cover and grab it from Amazon. FURTHER UPDATE: Hark! now has two bonus cuts, "Sleigh Ride," in the style of "Lady Madonna," and "The First Noel" arranged as "Let It Be."

This Northwest band donated this song to a Christmas In the Northwest charity compilation in 2005, and it's definitely a cult anthem, the cult being everybody who works in retail, military, law enforcement, as a caregiver or first responder, a daily newspaper, and quite a few other vocations that don't get holidays off. The whole Xmas NW compilation is still downloadable via Amazon, and this song can be picked individually. UPDATE: Forgot I had a link to a video of the song; here it is.

I kind of scratched my head at someone who wrote to me asking about King Family Christmas music, since the old-line family chorale approach doesn't loom large at Mistletunes. Then I received this 2006 collection. So if my correspondent was referring to this collection, apologies. This compilation from Hoboken, N.J.-area bands, led by members of Better Off Dead, is intended to raise money for displaced and impoverished musicians in post-Katrina New Orleans, and these folks are a bluesy bunch of rockers. The recording quality is good, the performances are spontaneous (and a bit of a surprise to the live audiences on a hot August night). Though you can tell these are hometown players rather than international stars, this is quite listenable all at once. Highlights include Big Ed Sullivan's extended take on "Merry Christmas Baby," Christine Santelli's original "Christmastime," Dave Gross and Sean Daly's "Django Bells," which of course is "Jingle Bells" as Django Reinhart might have done it, Better Off Dead's take on "All I Got For Christmas Was Drunk" and their original "Alcoholiday" (sense a trend with this band?), Galea and Popa Chubby's "Blue Christmas" shuffle, Mike Frensley's original "Winter Dreams," and the Cramps-like "All I Want For Christmas Is You" by The Slippery Chickens. A solo slide guitar version of "Little Drummer Boy" by Joe Taino is pretty unexpected, too. The rest is good boozy fun. Remains available from CDBaby.

Discovered this Belgian band via the Facebook page Cool Christmas Songs. This is from their 2007 album Stars on the Wall, which you can download from Amazon. They appear to be a power-pop ensemble, and while this sounds a little dour, the lyrics are a bit on the optimistic side. Don't know what eventually happened to the girl who keeled over after biting into the enchanted pizza, though....

Here's a sprightly pair of gifts from the ex-Talking Heads couple, available only from their site as MP3s back in 2002, with no indication they'll ever be back. UPDATE: The two songs, along with two additional remixes of "Club," are on an import-only EP called, strangely enough, Mistletunes! Anway, "Club" is a dance-floor stomper with vocorder alternating with Tina Weymouth's singing. "Il Est Né" is more languid and melodious, with synth and cello counterpoint. A traditional tune, the title means "He Is Born" or "See Him Born," depending on whose automatic Internet translation you believe.

This 2006 single comes from Hipjoint Productions, the Canadian production/promotion house that works with such folks as Katie Melua, Shiloh, Kelly Rowland, Daniel Powter and others. There's no artist credits for this thing, other than a press release that states the performance is "led by our own Mike James and the Hipjoint staff." A Nettwerk page for Troy Samson gives the song as one of his compositions, and that's pretty much all I can find out. Nevertheless, it's a strong acoustic/electric pop-rocker, with guitar figures reminiscent of "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)." Lyrically, it's all about those signposts that tell you it's the holiday season. UPDATE: In an odd twist, this record has been reissued for 2011 with the artist changed to The Young Goulets and the record label from Nettwerk to Hipjoint. To my ears it's the same record, remixed, after a/b'ing the sample on Amazon against my original copy. Click the cover art to download the current version from Amazon.

This Wisconsin parody band mashes up the best of the Beatles and Metallica on their previous albums, and for 2009 snuck out this four-song EP in which they Metallicize "Wonderful Christmastime" and "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" for your heavy metal delectation. Two other songs on the EP are "Hella Day (For Holiday)" and "Heretic," the band's first completely original tunes, the former a Christmas tune, the latter not. Both are far more Tallica than Beat, so let that guide your purchasing decisions.

We've briefly mentioned this Beatles tribute band in the past, as their "Joy To the World" based on "Please Please Me" has turned up in movies and on TV. (And we also noted the Fab Four had done nearly the same exact thing.) What amazes me is that it's taken me this long to get their full album from 2005 to the site. Apparently, the group had needed several years to put together an LP's worth of tunes together, as the members live in far-flung locales. As per the liner notes, they recorded batches of this in 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2005. Aside from the one coincidence noted above, The Butties have nothing to worry about concerning their originality, even given the existence of previous works in this vein like the Fab Four and the Rubber Band's now-hard-to-find Xmas! The Beatmas! "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town" meets "Twist and Shout," "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" is rendered as "Can't Buy Me Love," they do "O Little Town of Bethlehem" once as "In My Life" and again as a medley with three other carols all set as the various movements of "Happiness Is a Warm Gun." Another highlight is the "Sgt. Pepper" reprise and "A Day in the Life" done as a medley of "We Wish You a Merry Christmas," "Jolly Old St. Nicholas" and "Up on the Housetop." Once more, I have to restrain myself from spoiling all the surprises. You can get this as hardcopy from CDBaby or from iTunes by clicking on the album cover. By the way, you might not be surprised to find that two of the Butties are with the Blanks, the band that appeared on "Scrubs" singing commercial jingles a capella.