I love the holidays! I love punk! And I especially love when the two come together! Welcome to my own little holiday workshop where, each week this festive season, I’ll be compiling mini reviews of recent seasonal-themed tracks, whether they be covers of old classics or original songs; and I’ll sort out the naughty from the nice!
The Aquadolls / Devon Kay & The Solutions – “Christmas Wrapping” (orig. The Waitresses)
The Waitresses’ “Christmas Wrapping,” which turns 40 this year, is my favorite Christmas song of all time, so I’m excited about these two covers of the song. The Waitresses were a weird pop experiment from experimental music artist Chris Butler who wanted to see, if he wrote pop songs from a female perspective and gave them to a female singer, would the songs still be relatable to women? With a rather brief existence that produced two hit singles and the theme song to one very short-lived sitcom, it’s debatable if his experiment was a success, but their first album, Wasn’t Tomorrow Wonderful, is really great.
Anyway, The Aquadolls cover this song and turn it into more of a ska-punk song whereas the original was more of a Dexys Midnight Runners-style new wave song. The addition of Fishbone’s Angelo Moore and NOFX’s El Hefe (presumably both on horns) gives the song some street cred. I like that they sped the song up a little, and they managed to keep a lot of the flavor of the original while speeding it up. Overall, this is a great cover for skanking around the Christmas tree.
Devon Kay & The Solutions’ version, on the other hand, doesn’t really do it for me. Also turning it into a ska song, the vocals feel very jokey, as if the singer doesn’t want us to think they’re taking the song too seriously. Plus they completely change the vocal rhythms of the original in a way that I just don’t enjoy. It feels like a very unfaithful cover that loses the quiet dignity of the original.
Audio Drones – “Let It Snow” (Sammy Cahn/Jule Styne cover)
I’m not as big of a fan of punk covers of traditional Christmas songs as I am of original Christmas songs and covers of more modern classics, and Audio Drones’ rendition of “Let it Snow” (which I always want to write as “Le Tits Now”, thanks SNL) is no exception. They breathe a little bit of new life into a tired old classic, and they certainly seem to be having fun doing this song, but in the end it’s still the same song you’ve been hearing of all your life and are probably tired of by now.
Direct Hit! – “Christmas at Ground Zero” (“Weird Al” Yankovic cover)
Direct Hit! hits us with their cover of “Weird Al” Yankovic’s Christmas classic, “Christmas at Ground Zero.” I have to admit, I actually wasn’t familiar with the original Weird Al version, and thought, at first, that it was a Direct Hit! original. That led me to think that maybe a band that put out an entire concept album about the apocalypse shouldn’t put out another song about the apocalypse for fear of being redundant. Now that I know it’s a cover, I’ve backed off from that position a little bit, but not completely. It still sounds like a song that could have been a track off their 2013 album Brainless God. But I do appreciate the guitar playing “Jingle Bells” and “Frosty the Snowman” between verses, even if it’s not particularly original, as well as Nick Woods’ screaming delivery of “But if someone’s climbing down your chimney/You better load your gun and shoot to kill” that makes it almost sound like he’s taking the ridiculous line seriously. So, looking at it in isolation rather than comparing it to past Direct Hit! work, it’s a pretty good cover that turns Weird Al’s Phil Spector style parody into a pop-punk/hardcore comedy track.
Dream Nails – “Lonely Star”
Dream Nails, a four-piece feminist punk group from the UK, brings us “Lonely Star,” the rare Christmas song without the word “Christmas” in the title. This is a type of Christmas song that I’ve never really heard before because, rather than celebrating the joy of Christmas or jokingly hating on the holiday like a lot of songs, “Lonely Star” is dedicated to everyone who finds the holidays tough and lonely, and encourages you to look out for people who are having a hard time with Christmas. It’s exactly the kind of song you’d expect from left-wing activists, with a lot of progressive political language used in the lyrics. And, you know what? Reaching out to people who are having a hard time is much more in keeping with the Christmas spirit than simply talking about how happy the holiday makes you. The “visualizer” for the song (which differs from a music video in that the whole video loops back around to the beginning before the song ends) is undeniable adorable fun.
Kurt Baker – “Christmas in the Sand”
Kurt Baker, formerly of The Leftovers, brings us “Christmas in the Sand,” a song about wanting to spend Christmas at the beach. It’s not a bad song by any means, but it’s also not a song that really stands out to me as being anything really special. The biggest problem for me is that the “Christmas in warm weather” theme has been done to death at this point. Just thinking off the top of my head there’s things like Jagger Holly’s “Christmas in Hawaii,” “California Christmastime” from the musical TV series Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, and, oh yeah, Bing Crosby’s classic “Mele Kalikimaka.” At this point, it feels like Baker is bit late to the party, and brought the same bottle of wine as everyone else.
L.A. Exes – “My Favorite Time of Year”
L.A. Exes give us a jangly little pop tune with “My Favorite Time of Year.” It’s a very lighthearted and breezy little tune that’s, admittedly, a little shallow, but you have to allow for that a little bit with Christmas music. The only person I can think of who goes into deep emotional depths with their Christmas songs is Chris Farren. Otherwise it’s more about capturing the fun spirit of the holiday, and L.A. Exes do a very good job of that.
Side Saddle – “Evergreen Magic”
Side Saddle’s “Evergreen Magic” is a gorgeous little Death Cab for Cutie-style tune about the joy of being a child and going to cut down a Christmas tree to bring back to the living room. This is an annual tradition I never really experienced growing up as my mom, for fear of setting off my outdoor allergies, always put up a plastic tree. But Side Saddle goes into great detail about the experience and it almost transports you to that time and place, even if you’ve never been there. It’s such a fun and cute little tune, I think I’ll add this to my personal Christmas playlist.
Julie is punk rock, lesbian time lady from the future. The greatest things in the world are punk rock and science fiction. Check out her website JulieRiver.com!
