I Hear Something Barking In The Stair

There is pretty stark difference between playing a straight forward cover of a holiday song and then trying to put your own personal stamp on a popular Christmas tune. Arcade Fire do neither in their now much-lauded, moderately-loathed attempt at a "Christmas" album. As the legend goes, members of Arcade Fire took a drunken winter's eve oh so many years ago (before their Funeral heydays) and grabbed whatever instruments lay around the Montreal apartment and decided to recreate song Christmas cheer, to varying results. There's definitely a ramshackle and un-micced drum kit, a trombone, a out of tune piano, and I swear I hear a slide whistle pop up every once in a while. The tunes are cringe-worthy at best, 'Chestnuts Roasting' mildly mimicking chord progressions and taking best-guesses at lyrically melodic accompaniment, and 'Jingle Bell Rock' must have been recorded during that tiny interval of time at any good party right as everyone hits their highs and then it's all downhill from there. 'O Holy Night' takes itself way too seriously in the beginning and then kind of vomits on itself before the final refrain. Surprisingly the finest song of the bunch is the original take of the aptly titled 'A Very Arcade Xmas', which starts off seeming as a bit of jerking around, making up goofy lyrics, bandmates probably switching instruments, but settles down halfway thru to be a pretty damn decent little lo-fi holiday number.

The rest of the "Xmas" album are extraordinarily un-Xmas-y and act as rough takes on demos and future album tracks, most notably a decent take of 'In The Backseat'. So it's only really those four songs padded with some other material the Fire was testing the waters on. They packaged this and handed it out as gifts that Christmas. I help but think they may have lost some friends that year. But they made up for it shortly after.

This all ties into yesterdays listen, Ira Ironstrings Plays Santa interestingly. You see, Ira Ironstrings was a.k.a. Alvino Rey, and Avino Rey is Win Butler's grandfather, and Win Butler is the lead singer of Arcade Fire. So that's kind of fun huh?

This thing gets a C-, because while it was probably a blast to make and we get a kick out of it the first time around, I don't see this having any chance of becoming classic, and really, isn't that what Christmas music is about. I'd hope that if this album had any intention of doing any good in the world that it would further motivate the band to redeem themselves someday and release a proper holiday album, because you know that would be pretty damn good.