Every year it seems my writing career is getting bigger and better. I write for a number of publications now, three as assistant editor, and just put in my two-weeks notice at my day job so that I can focus on all my writing. But as my career advances, I always remember how much TGEFM and Jeff did to help me get started. Plus, they give me the chance to write about one of my favorite topics: Christmas punk music. So let’s jump back into the best and worst of Christmas music that’s punk, punk adjacent, and everything else. Be sure to read part 1’s reviews from last week here.
LP: Ben Folds – “Sleigher”
Piano-rock legend Ben Folds gives us a full Christmas album this year with Sleigher, although we’ve already seen in past editions of this column that there’s a Christmas-themed metal band called Sleigher. But I guess great minds think alike. Folds giving his Christmas album a title that’s a pun off a famous metal band is kind of ironic considering that, while Folds basically treats this like any of his other solo albums, it is one of his more somber albums to date. Sleigher has a lot of what makes Folds great including his penchant for clever lyrics and gorgeous melodies, but I would have liked to see some more of Folds’ hard rock side come out in this album as well.
Opening track “Little Drummer Bolero” is a sleeper of an instrumental that really sets the tone for the album to come, and then “Sleepwalking Through Christmas” is quiet and soft enough to reflect the song’s title. “Me and Maurice” is similarly soft and contemplative with a beautifully sad melody.
“Christmas Time Rhyme” picks up the energy just a little, but it’s still got a soft jazz feel to it as it moves through nostalgic memories of the holiday season. “Waiting for Snow” is more of a mood piece, an instrumental that somehow manages to bring out imagery of snow with just instruments.
“We Could Have This” with guest vocalist Lindsey Kraft is a really sweet and beautiful Christmas love song, and with all his years of writing love songs (not to mention his five marriages), Folds knows how to write both happy and sad love songs, and this one is a bit of both. His cover of the classic “The Christmas Song” that was first recorded by The Nat King Cole Trio is sparse with just a simple acoustic guitar and occasional piano, but it manages to really work in its minimalism.
“The Bell That Couldn’t Jingle” has a bit more energy after the rest of this album has been so slow, but it’s still very much a soft jazz tune. “Xmas Aye Eye” (which is an alternate spelling of “Christmas A.I.”) is a song that Folds claims at the beginning is written by artificial intelligence (A.I.). Whether or not that’s true, it’s the first track on the whole album that hits that high-energy rock vibe that I really wanted on this album. But, coming in with that energy on the first-to-last track is a bit too little too late. Finally “You Don’t Have to Be a Santa Claus” is, again, soft and jazzy with lyrics about finding the Christmas spirit.
Let me say again, there’s nothing wrong with Ben Folds’ softer side. But I think Folds works best when his soft side is balanced out by his rock side. After all, this is the man who’s brought us such piano-driven hard rock classics as “Song for the Dumped” and “Rockin the Suburbs.” I really wish that more of that could have come out on this album. But if you’re a fan of Folds for his melodies and his crooning style, then you’ll really appreciate this album.
Bitters and Distractions – “Punk Rock Christmas”
There actually is already a song that I know of called “Punk Rock Christmas” which is by The Last Gang frontwoman Brenna Red and it’s one of my all time punk rock holiday favorites. I was half-hoping that this was a cover of that song, but sadly it was not. But if Jagger Holly can write a completely original song and name it “Santa Baby,” then anyone is allowed to use already existing song titles, especially with holiday songs.
With just an acoustic guitar and vocals, this is a pretty basic song, albeit with a pretty good melody. The lyrics are basically a celebration of getting drunk on Christmas. It feels a little like a throw-away track that wasn’t taken that seriously because it’s a holiday track, and I always hate when bands do that.
That being said, the video is a bit more interesting, even if it’s mostly one long shot. I like the way they make the video look like it was shot on an old ’90s camcorder (or maybe it actually was) and there’s some very old-school computer animated snowflake graphics superimposed over the video at one point. But some nostalgic effects in the video don’t really make up for the fact that the song is really basic.
Cascade Riot – “Unhappy New Year”
Back in the ’90s when the sitcom genre was at its height, there was this sort of unwritten rule that a TV show could either have a Christmas episode or a New Year’s episode, but never both in the same year. The only show I know of that broke this rule was Frasier, which did a Christmas episode in December of 1999 then came back in early 2000 and did a New Year’s Eve episode entirely in flashbacks. So, while New Year’s isn’t exactly the same as Christmas, it falls into the same general holiday category that this column covers. Besides that, Cascade Riot‘s visualizer for “Unhappy New Year” on YouTube features a close up of a Christmas tree, so it definitely counts.
Giving us a very classic ’90s punk style, “Unhappy New Year” shifts between dour sounding verses and an upbeat, catchy chorus to create a really dynamic contrast that totally works on this song. The lyrics are a cynical take on the holiday, which is hardly anything new in holiday punk songs (see Blink-182‘s classic “I Won’t Be Home for Christmas” [editor- quite possibly the best punk Christmas song next to “Christmas at Ground Zero.”]), but they sell the bitterness of this track really well. All in all, it’s a really infectious song that doesn’t feel like they just wrote a throw-away song for the holidays.
The Dollyrots – “I Wish It Could be Christmas Everyday”
Ah, The Dollyrots! I always talk about how I first came to love this band, and it started several years back when I reviewed the Wiretap Records Christmas compilation and complimented them on their cover of “All I Want for Christmas is You,” which I said was the only good cover track on the whole comp because they breathed life into a tired old Christmas song that everyone’s bored of. The Dollyrots found me on social media to personally thank me and got me a very early copy of their next album to make sure I reviewed it. Since I’ve gone farther as a music journalist, I’ve come to find that it’s not uncommon for bands I’ve written about to reach out to me on social media like this, but usually it’s much smaller, more up-and-coming bands that are looking for their start, not big name, Lookout Records veterans like The Dollyrots. So I appreciate them for that, and I’ve tried to stay vaguely in contact with them over the years. And, of course, they’re punks that appreciate Christmas as much as I do, and they put out a really great Christmas track every year. Sometimes it’s a cover, sometimes it’s an original, but it almost always has a great energy. While they still haven’t responded to my request that they cover my all-time favorite Christmas rock song, The Waitresses‘ “Christmas Wrapping” (they would do a great job with that song), I’m still happy to see what they put out every year.
This year, they released a cover of the 1973 Christmas track “I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday” by Wizzard. I didn’t remember that song off the top of my head, so I looked it up and listened to it before listening to The Dollyrots’ version of it and, sure enough, I’ve heard it a million times before and just didn’t remember it. It’s one of those Christmas songs that’s embedded in our cultural psyche so much that we kind of forget the original artist.
The Dollyrots did a great job of taking this song and making a distinctly Dollyrots version of this song. I always say that you should really make a song your own if you’re going to cover it, otherwise why wouldn’t I just listen to the original? This cover sounds like it could have easily been a Dollyrots original because it has all the hallmarks of their style, including the kids singing at the end which I assume is a guest appearance by The Dollyrots kids, a.k.a. The Dollytots. The band added this track to their A Very Dollyrots Christmas album on Bandcamp, which is already packed with all of their classic Christmas songs, so I recommend listening to the whole thing. There’s really not a bad track on that album.
Gama Bomb – “A Coffin for Christmas”
This Christmas track from Irish thrash metal band Gama Bomb has a lot of hardcore elements, but once the guitar solos come in, there’s no question this is a metal act. I appreciate that they didn’t half-ass this because it’s a Christmas track and, instead, they put in some brilliant riffs and absolutely sick solos into it.
The lyrics depict a Santa Claus that’s gotten truly fed up with those on the naughty list and is coming to unleash vengeance on them. It’s a perfectly metal scenario that’s made absurd enough to play for laughs, making it really a clever send-up of the Santa Claus myth.
As for the video, that might be the best part. I really appreciate the burned in text on the video that says that it was recorded on Christmas 1992. The video depicts the band opening their presents and just generally fucking around until some sort of hybrid Santa/Krampus creature shows up at the end to murder them all. Really, this is a very fun track all around.
The Hallingtons – “Home Alone (for Xmas)”
Even the band name “The Hallingtons” just screams “We want to be the Ramones!” And when I looked them up, sure enough, all their album covers look distinctly Ramones-esque. That’s not to say that there’s necessarily anything wrong with that. I love me some Ramonescore music if done right.
I really expected this song, since it’s literally called “Home Alone,” to have some references to the ’90s holiday classic film Home Alone, or its superior sequel Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (yes, you heard me, the sequel is better), but, to my shock, it has nothing to do with that film series. Instead, it seems to be a sad song about enduring a Christmas alone after a bad breakup. It’s got a spirited Ramonescore energy, and I especially like the bridge when everything slows down a little. Writing songs about being alone for Christmas is nothing new. Hell, Elvis Presley‘s most famous Christmas song was about being sad on Christmas after a breakup. But The Hallingtons manage to inject a really infectious energy into this song. Add in the video where the band is having a snowball fight with Santa, and you’ve got a really great Christmas track here.
Skatune Network – “Merry Christmas Baby”
I’m going to throw in the other Christmas cover that Skatune Network did and do them both together:
Skatune Network is the solo covers project of We Are the Union horn player Jer Hunter, who is such a big personality that they’ve kind of become as well-known, if not moreso, than WATU frontwoman Reade Wolcott. In the interest of full-disclosure, I wanted to mention that Jer and I actually became Facebook friends a few years back because they really appreciated a piece I wrote for TGEFM about Dickey Barrett.
Skatune Network often gives us really good Christmas covers, and this year is no exception. They cover the classic “Merry Christmas Baby,” which they credit as an Otis Redding track but actually was first recorded in 1947 by Johnny Moore’s Three Blazers. I imagine it’s a bit more of a challenge to turn an R&B track into a ska track than it might appear at first impression, and Jer really adds that ska bounce to this track to make it a real ska bop.
Considering Skatune Network has released not one but three volumes of their Ska Goes Emo collections, it’s no surprise that they wanted to cover Fall Out Boy‘s big Christmas tune “Yule Shoot Your Eye Out” from the 2003 compilation album A Santa Cause: It’s a Punk Rock Christmas. Whereas FOB’s original version is an emotionally wrought acoustic emo tune, Jer does an outstanding job of transforming it into a ska-punk rocker with a lot more energy than the original. I have to say, I might actually like Skatune’s cover of this one even more than the original, and that’s saying something because I’m acutally a big Fall Out Boy fan (which I realize ruins my punk cred, but whatever).
EP: Vista Blue – “We Don’t Know, Margo”
Vista Blue really loves Christmas, apparently. Every year I end up writing about a new Christmas EP from Vista Blue. That’s in addition to their side project Ralphie’s Red Riders, which is just Vista Blue writing songs about the 1983 film A Christmas Story.
Two years ago, I completely embarrassed myself by saying that I didn’t understand how Vista Blue’s song “Why Is the Carpet All Wet, Todd” had anything to do with the holidays, only to remember after the review was published that that’s a very famous line from the brilliant film National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. In my defense, as much as I love Christmas Vacation I think the Todd and Margo subplot is the least interesting part of that entire film. This year, I won’t make the same mistake, though, because the newest Christmas EP from Vista Blue is named after their follow-up track to that song called “I Don’t Know, Margo,” which is the very next line in the movie.
The very Ramonescore, three-track EP opens on “I’m Gonna Be Warm This Winter” which is about falling in love with someone next to the fire in a ski lodge. It seems like Vista Blue likes to sort of micro-focus on tiny little topics in their songs, not entirely unlike one of my favorite pop-punk bands, Pkew Pkew Pkew. They manage to turn this into a really effective and relatable holiday-themed love song.
Then the aforementioned semi-title track, “I Don’t Know, Margo” micro-focuses on a split-second scene in Christmas Vacaton in a way that’s incredibly catchy. Finally “When the Christmas Tree is All Aglow” adds in some Weezer-esque keyboards in a holiday-themed breakup song that stands as an interesting contrast to the opening track.
According to their Bandcamp, this is their 10th Christmas release in 10 years, and I have to applaud a band that’s as dedicated to holiday punk rock as I am. It’s fun and silly pop-punk at its best.
Worthington’s Law – “Whne the Aliens Arrived at Christmas”
In this fun and festive punk song by Worthington’s Law, aliens visiting earth manage to mistake Christmas decorations for a declaration of war, leaving it up to Santa and his reindeer to save the human race from imminent invasion.
The whole thing reminds me vaguely of MxPx‘s hilarious “Christmas Night of the Living Dead” that depicted a zombie invasion on Christmas. In fact, Worthington’s Law actually presents a more complete story here, with a satisfyingly humorous ending. Musically, this song is pretty standard punk fare with jingle bells in the background like most punk Christmas songs. But lyrically, this is a really solidly funny song that clearly took a lot of thought to come up with.
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.
the white drew carey (aka – Jeff Sorley) is the founder and head editor of TGEFM. He’s lived (outside of) Chicago, Madison WI, (ugh) Penn State, Lyon FR, Oxford UK, central New Jersey, and now within earshot of SFO in the Bay Area. When not scouring the web for more great bands and labels to post about, he also spends time drawing (mostly) silly sci-fi and anime stuff under the name Asplenia Studios.
