So I'm gonna try and listen to a new holiday album everyday to try and beef up my Christmas playlist. Christmas tunes are tricky. They live in their own little world in the realm of music. You're either covering a song that's been covered to death or you're trying to create new magical moments immortalized by people like Bing Crosby, Nat 'King' Cole and Alvin & the Chipmunks. So it's a sliding scale graded on a curve. But it's Christmas so...
Today's listen was brandy new from the Polyphonic Spree, Holidaydream. Already quite found of their past covers I thought that it would be interesting but I did not expect such wild interpretations of Christmas classics. Throwing familiar melody to the wind and relying strongly on lyrical recognition, the Spree really took some liberties with arena rock versions of Carol of the Drum and Little Drummer Boy, a spaced out Silver Bells and a very dark and lovely dirge version of The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year. They're version of Happy Xmas (War Is Over) has been floating around on compilations for a few years now, but maybe my biggest surprise was their rendition of Silent Night, adding a slightly sinister touch with twinkling harp and plinking acoustic guitar, sans vocals and possibly one of my favorite versions of this one particular song that usually fails to rise to the occasion. So, I liked it. A for the courage to push some of these songs further than at least I'd ever heard before.
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