Welcome back to my little punk rock workshop at the North Pole, my dearest boys, girls, and enbies of all ages! 2023 has been a big year for me, and these days I split my time between TGEFM and several other publications, but I couldn’t resist the opportunity to return to the site that launched my career to spread a little bit of punk rock holiday cheer once again. So grab a nice cold glass of soy nog and curl up next to the fire for the best and worst of holiday music from the worlds of punk, the punk adjacent, and everything else!
The Dollyrots – “Auld Lang Syne”
It’s time again for the annual Dollyrots holiday song! Like I said last year, the Dollyrots’ holiday song is as much a part of my Christmas tradition as watching It’s a Wonderful Life and shouting out every 15 minutes “Wow, that scene did not age well since 1946.
“Auld Lang Syne is about as old as holiday songs get, as this one can be traced back to at least 1788 where it was originally a Scots-language poem by Robert Burns, although he took some of the lyrics from even older Scottish folk songs. It’s not often that you get punk songs that date back to the 18th century, but somehow The Dollyrots perform the holiday miracle of breathing new life into a literally centuries-old tune.
Kelly Ogden sings the song with an amazing energy for such an old and familiar song. There’s also the addition of Ogden’s little inspirational speech between the verses and a sign-off by the Kelly Ogden’s and Luis Cabezas’ real-life children known as The Dollytots.
“Auld Lang Syne” is more commonly associated with New Year’s than Christmas, although, speak of the devil, it does appear at the very end of It’s a Wonderful Life. But if you’re looking for a version of “Auld Lang Syne” for your New Year’s party, I highly recommend this one.
Deer Tick – ‘Hit Kringles’ EP
Full disclosure: I went to high school with some of the members of Deer Tick. Bassist Chris Ryan was in my AP Music Theory class with me senior year, and frontman John McCauley claims to remember me but I don’t remember him from those days. Still, they’re absolutely hometown heroes for me, but I think I can review them without bias.
For Christmas this year, they’ve gifted us all with a three-track EP of Christmas covers—not traditional Christmas songs, thankfully, but rather some contemporary Christmas tunes. First up is “All Alone on Christmas” which was written and recorded by Steven Van Zandt and first released in 1992 by Darlene Love for the Home Alone 2 soundtrack featuring members of the E-Street band. This wasn’t Love’s first Christmas single, either. She was also the original performer of “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” in 1963 which you most likely know better from U2‘s cover of it. Deer Tick’s version adds a little bit of their indie alt-country style. McCauley performs it with the same authenticity as if it was a Deer Tick original, never giving a sense of phoning in his vocals just because it’s a Christmas cover.
Then comes “Blue Christmas,” a song made famous by Elvis Presley but which, like most of Elvis’ biggest hits, was actually a cover, in this case a cover of a song by country artist Doyle O’Dell. Still, Elvis made the version that almost everyone knows, and Deer Tick’s cover most closely resembles the Elvis version. In fact, the vocals sound so Elvis-like that I’m tempted to say this can’t be McCauley singing, except I’m not aware of Deer Tick having a second lead vocalist. Still, while it’s basically an Elvis impression, it’s a spirited Elvis impression which captures the sadness of the Elvis version pretty perfectly.
For the third song, rather than pick another classic, Deer Tick actually pulls out a cover of one of their friends and contemporaries, The Felice Brothers. Deer Tick gives the song a stronger back beat turning the original classic-style country song more of an alt-country treatment.
All in all, there’s not a bad track on this three-track EP, and I give the band a lot of credit for actually putting their heart into these covers. Plus, the EP is available as a name-your-own-price offer on Bandcamp, so there’s no reason not to download it.
LLC – “Holiday Road”
LLC give us a cover of the song “Holiday Road” by Lindsey Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac fame. The original song first appeared on the soundtrack to National Lampoon’s Vacation. Note that I said Vacation and not Christmas Vacation. In fact, the song appears in every film in the Vacation film series except for Christmas Vacation. The original song wasn’t even a holiday song. The title refers to a “holiday” as in the British sense of the word where it can mean more of a “vacation.” LLC try their best to turn this into a festive tune by including Christmas imagery on the single art and adding in jingle bells to the background of the song and finishing off with a clip from Christmas Vacation, but that doesn’t quite make it into a Christmas song. If they were looking to do a cover song that was both appropriate for the holidays and paid tribute to the Vacation movies, Mavis Staples’ song “Christmas Vacation” from the Christmas Vacation soundtrack would have been a much more obvious choice.
Mento Buru – “Christmas Time in Bakersfield”
“Christmas Time in Bakersfield” is a single off of Mento Buru’s second holiday EP, East Bakersfield Christmas II. It manages to merge laid-back ska with a sort of country twang, which is something I never thought I’d hear and certainly wouldn’t have assumed could be pulled off well, but somehow Mento Buru make it work. The melodies are classic and gorgeous and the lyrics paint a vivid picture of what Christmas is like in the band’s hometown. Overall, a very solid holiday track.
Ordinary Things – “First Flurries”
“First Flurries” is a soft-electronic, (mostly) instrumental holiday track. It’s very, very difficult to make an original instrumental song that still evokes a feeling of the holidays, but Ordinary Things manage to pull off that near-impossible task. One might even call it a Christmas miracle. There’s some vocals in the background, but they aren’t singing lyrics, they simply add to the overall feel of the song. It makes you imagine a gorgeous winter night admiring the snow as it blankets the city making for a picturesque landscape.
Save Ferris – “Xmas Blue”
I’m not a huge fan of modern Save Ferris. Frontwoman Monique Powell is the only member left from the band’s glory days, and the only reason she’s even allowed to call her new band Save Ferris is due to a bitter legal battle that I don’t believe she should have won. But then, she hasn’t been doing much with the band name now that she’s won it, as “Xmas Blue” is only her second release since bringing the band back from hiatus, the first being the 2017 EP Checkered Past. “Xmas Blue” is a perfectly fine ska-punk Christams song, but it doesn’t particularly stand out as anything special. It’s played well, but the hooks aren’t that memorable and the lyrics are standard fare for a heartbroken Christmas song. In fact, the title isn’t even that original as the title “Blue Christmas” is very much taken by one of the great Christmas love songs of all time, and Powell just switched the words around and changed “Christmas” to “X-Mas.” So, more than likely, this isn’t one that’s going to be added to my regular rotation on my holiday playlist.
Once a year TGEFM lets contributor Julie River break out her “Queen of Mean” hat in order to spend the holiday season critiquing this year’s crop of holiday-themed tunes. Some she loves, some she definitely doesn’t. But what are you gonna do? If you’re gonna wade into the Thunderdome that is HOLIDAY SONGS, you’d damn well better bring your A game.
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!
