Archives for December 2009

Phil Spector/Various Artists - A Christmas Gift for You (Philles, released 1963)

In 1963, Phil Spector made this legendary Christmas album with his wife Ronnie Spector, of The Ronettes, singing on Frosty the Snowman and I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus. Over 40 years later, Phil Spector was arraigned for murder around the same time Ronnie Spector was singing a song called Girl from the Ghetto, with the lyric: "I hope your hell is filled with magazines / and on every page is a picture of me". Clearly things had changed. But back then, Spector's aggression, neurosis and ego were merely fuel to some of the greatest pop records ever made. This record - re-released to greater commercial success in 1972 as Phil Spector's Christmas Album - overflows with tinselly joy and a thunderous glee that crushes all opposition like a runaway sleigh. Others have made better Christmas songs (Slade) and written more relevant lyrics (Spector collaborator Lennon), but nobody has bettered what is, effectively, the template for all Christmas music that followed in its wake, from Paul McCartney to Mariah Carey.

Listen to Christmas (Baby Please Come Home), by Darlene Love. This was released as a single on the same day as the A Christmas Gift for You album.



YouTube: Darlene Love - Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)

Dean Martin and Andy Dunn. Can you spot the difference?

The Kings College Choir are usually on pretty heavy rotation in my house in late December, but even the best of us can tire of those 16 cherubic voices after a while. So when that point is reached (somewhere between laying the table and The Queen's Speech) we reach for Dino.

There's something about that Italian-American accent, the whiff of a late night in Vegas and some straight-up classic Christmas songs that transports you away to a different kind of Christmas. This is not the yuletide of soggy sprouts and re-runs of Dibley, this is Times Square, or a log cabin in upstate New York. It's the Christmas you see in the movies.

We used to have a different Dean Martin Christmas album, but it got all scratched and had something sticky on it, hopefully nothing more sinister than a bit of figgy pud, nevertheless the one we listen to now has digitally re-mastered versions of most of the greats: Let It Snow!, White Christmas, Baby It's Cold Outside and Silent Night. They sound great... but then they always did.

Dino was of course famous for liking a wee dram during his performances so his velvety tones are also a signal that, whatever time it is, the sun is surely over the yardarm - anyone for a Stones Ginger Wine?

N.B. Please drink responsibly. As Dino himself used to say: "If you drink, don't drive... in fact don't even putt"

Dean Martin - Marshmallow World

Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass, Christmas Album (High Coin)

I think I better come clean right away. I'm reviewing the wrong album.

When asked to nominate my favourite Christmas offering, fond '70s childhood memories charged Tijuana Christmas to the front of the queue; the warm embrace of the brass, the energizing and mood-lifting effect, all suspended in glowing twinkly soft-focus. As soon as the record went on my sister and I would stop bickering over who had received the most prized colour of bubble bath (green) and run around the dining table - the needle jumping from it's groove every time we dashed over the loose plank in the floor.

Ah...it was up there with Jim Reeves, Nat, Bing and Sinatra, with The Railway Children soundtrack, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and the Disney songs. My mum would habitually protest about syncopated "Americanized" corruptions of traditional songs and the extra notes added to the falling cadence of O Come All Ye Faithfull. She always suggested putting 'proper' carols on by 'proper' choirs (like Kings College, Cambridge), but this really was the record that put a smile on all our faces and caused outbreaks of seasonal familial harmony. The standard faves were all there - The Holly and the Ivy, Hark the Herald, O Come All Ye Faithfull, O Little Town - a joyous smorgasbord of easy listening.

Latterly, my older sister shamelessly snaffled the record amongst a prized section of original family vinyl, so for the purposes of this review I ordered up the CD. There were some disconcerting signs even at this stage, the cover picture shown online was different, but hey that happens, and the reviews mentioned vocals, I didn't remember any of those. And when it arrived, one of my old favourites was nowhere to be seen on the tracklist! As soon as it started, I knew my mistake. This was not easy listening brass that revelled in its unpretentious jollity, this was, well...jazz.

Recorded in the summer of 1968, there are shades of Beach Boy sunshine amongst the self-conscious cool. West Coast jazzer Shorty Rogers did the vocal and string arrangements, and the album went platinum.

In its best moments, it sounds like a cocktail party with Audrey Hepburn about to walk through the door on the arm of James Bond. There are samba and rumba rhythms, some inventive arrangements, a nicely laidback Let It Snow, a Mariachi-flavoured Las Mananitas, a Dixie Jingle Bell Rock with a 'striptease' coda.

In its worst moments it's like being trapped in a lift all Christmas long accompanied by The Swingle Singers, with nothing to eat and drink except Advocaat and sugared orange and lemon jelly slices. And please, Herb, covering The Christmas Song - you're not Nat King Cole, just leave it.

The album may have made me giggle and sometimes made me snap my fingers and tap my feet, and it certainly it helped my four-year old son find his "funky legs", but it didn't make my heart leap.

Turns out the album basking in the warm glow of my 70s childhood was in fact a 'tribute album' called Tijuana Christmas not Christmas Album, whereby soundalike musicians (in this case the magnificent sounding Torero Band) reproduced the Herb Alpert Tijuana Sound. What's more it was put out by Music For Pleasure and cost a cool 99p.

Whilst the real Tijuana brass album has been remastered and reissued, the Torero's Tijuana Christmas has been scandalously discontinued. It's time to start the lobby for the reissue, I want to recapture that 70s glow and pass it on to my children.

I'm sure in all sorts of ways the Herb Alpert is a better and more inventive musical accomplishment. But - whisper it - I like the fake better.



Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass, Christmas Song

Carla Bley w/ Steve Swallow and the Partyka Brass Quintet - Carla's Christmas Carols

(Watt Works/ECM, released 2009)

The sound of a brass ensemble is an important element of musical tradition at Christmas, that horseshoe of buskers thumbing, fingerless-gloved, through the book of Salvation Army carol arrangements in the corner of a town centre. There's something of this tradition that American jazz composer Carla Bley evokes and re-works in an album that glows with the warm tone of The Partyka Brass Quintet and sparks with the jazz inflections brought to familiar material. There is a brightness to much of the music, helped by the clarity of Steve Swallow's guitar sound and the use of glockenspiel, celeste and chimes; but largely this is the result of Bley's inventive and humorous re-composition. God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman begins with a lullaby lilt reminiscent of Gershwin's Summertime, before giving way to a Take Five riff over which trumpeter Axel Schlosser improvises harmony-stretching lines. A boozy blues sensibility informs It Came Upon A Midnight Clear, which borrows drunkenly from My Bonnie Lies Over The Ocean. Elsewhere, Bley's reworking is subtler, embracing the richness of traditional brass chorale writing. Her re-harmonisation of O Tannenbaum is simple beauty, an old tune cloaked in new chord progressions, capturing a sense of the mournful nostalgia that can also be part of Christmas.

The Lancashire Hotpots' Christmas Cracker - (Townshend Records, released 2009)

For those not in the know - though, maybe, they might prefer to stay that way - The Lancashire Hotpots are a comedy folk(ish) ensemble from St Helens, whose He's Turned Emo (included here, alongside a few other non-festive numbers) was something of a cult hit in 2007. The cheap and cheerful lyrical playfulness of that single - "He used to listen to Simply Red / Now he's listening to Fall Out Boy instead" - carries over into this collection, which features 23 tracks, roughly half of which are written specially for this time of year. Christmas Number One finds the holly-jolly four-piece searching under the tree for a chart-topper, only to conclude that it'll go the way of the X Factor whatever their findings (or maybe not this year?); It's Cliff-mas Time is an oddly tender tribute to the decades-spanning seasonal number ones of Sir Cliff (a "bona-fide friend of JC", of course); and Gaviscon Christmas rides a Last Christmas-aping melody but turns Wham!'s song of lost love into a tale of necking 24 cans of lager before the Queen's speech - "I feel like spending Christmas on the bog / Please, no jokes about chocolate logs". The jokes are thinner than pound shop wrapping paper, the group's shtick established with their opener and never stretched. But with everything sung with a smile, it's impossible to not giggle gently along with many of these efforts, and this CD will make a fine substitute for exchanging cracker gags after gorging on turkey with the trimmings.

Watch an advertisement (of sorts) for The Lancashire Hotpots' Christmas Cracker

Various Artists - In The Christmas Groove (Strut Records, 2009)

The 1986 James Brown album In The Jungle Groove, was compiled to capitalise on hip hop's use of the evergreen Funky Drummer break. That album now provides inspiration for this collection of Yuletide jams.

Despite the rather novelty cover, this is a solid compilation. Perhaps oddly, there are no James Brown joints, but the style is appropriately lean and funky drawing from 60s/70s US rhythm, blues and soul. Jimmy Reed's Christmas Present Blues lifts its opening figure from Papa's Got A Brand New Bag before lurching into a loose, propulsive groove. Meanwhile Funk Machine's Soul Santa drops a party jam for the big man, replete with chicken scratch guitar and the obligatory sleigh bells.

Wild Honey's Angel's Christmas features a charming spoken word interlude wherein winter clouds resemble John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King whilst finally, The Black On White Affair turn Hogmanay favourite Auld Lang Syne into a slinky, funkified roller. "Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, hippies and squares... Happy new year!"

The Fab Four - A Fab Four Christmas (Delta 2002), Have yourself a FAB-ulous Little Christmas (Delta, 2002).

To call The Fab Four a bizarre phenomenon is to undersell their strangeness considerably. Hailing from Los Angeles, the group boasts two Pauls, two Georges, three Johns and three Ringos and alongside world tours and a Las Vegas residency sustains a number of side projects including collaboration with Eric Idle "Rutlemania" (a parody band tribute band - I've a feeling we're not in Kansas any more).

Double album Christmas with The Fab Four: The Ultimate Tribute is a suitably odd concoction from 2002, in which The Fab Four bring Beatles stylings to Christmas favourites ancient and modern. Prices quoted online indicate that it's become something of a collectors' item, which is saying something in a year where remasters of the entire Beatles catalogue are jostling for position on Christmas lists with the Beatles edition of the Rock Band console game. That the Fab Four have also brought enormous craft, attention, imagination and humour to the enterprise does nothing to redeem its fundamental wrongness.

Album number one of the pair, A Fab Four Christmas, features the Beatles c.1965, complete with somewhat toe-curling cheeky studio banter and close harmony vocals. Vocal timbres, production and instrumentation are creepily note-perfect imitations of the original, even if accents occasionally suffer slippage. (The McCartney soundalike in opener Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer brings a weirdly Scandinavian twinge to the otherwise flawless Liverpudlian, and Winter Wonderland's Ringo has a central European shading to his long 'A's despite well-observed trademark flat intonation and growly tone.) But these are tiny quibbles, because what's going on here is not simply a band singing Christmas songs in the style of the Beatles, but singing individual tunes in the style of specific Beatles tracks, sometimes creating mash-ups of a complexity and ingenuity that prefigure George Martin's 2006 remix masterpiece Love. You can't help admiring the inventiveness of grafting Help! to the tune of Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, or Away In The Manger to the backing of You've Got To Hide Your Love Away ("the little lord Jesus asleep in the - Hey! [you've got to hide....]").

I did find myself wondering what might happen if the band ventured into the territory of the Beatles' later discography (Adam Lay Ybounden in the style of Revolution 9, perhaps?). Cue album two, Have Yourself a FAB-ulous Little Christmas, which mines the rich seams of Revolver, the White Album, Abbey Road and Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Spot the song goes into overdrive: Little Drummer Boy to the backing of Sun King, with Jingle Bells set to the mock-esperanto middle eight, anyone? Silent Night re-imagined as Norwegian Wood? Santa Claus Is Coming To Town as When I'm 64, complete with quotes from Honey Pie? It's all there.

But this is where the problems really begin - what started out as a bit of fun starts to feel really pretty questionable. Whether your sympathies lie with the cheeky chappies of the early sixties or the psychedelic travellers they became, there's little dispute that the later Beatles transformed into something rich and strange. Sure, they never lost their spirit of play, but for my money, Jingle Bells as Tomorrow Never Knows is pushing it a bit. Good for a laugh, but would you want to listen to it more than once?

Thea Gilmore - Strange Communion (Fulfill 2009)

Does Christmas have to be a choice between little baby Jesus, rampant commercialism and Scrooge-ish misanthropy? Not according to singer-songwriter Thea Gilmore, who shows us what's still to love in this festive feast of an album which mixes the pagan and agnostic, tradition and modernity. And if you don't care about all that, well, Strange Communion is a bunch of really lovely songs....



The opener, Sol Invictus, is pretty breathtaking - an unaccompanied ode to the winter solstice, with Thea's strong, pure voice interwoven with beautiful harmonies from the Sense of Sound Choir (echoes of "Harry's Game", but that's not a bad thing in my book). Thereafter it's a varied but consistently strong album, with folk-rock, pop and even a bit of spoken word thrown in (no, don't run away)... easing between contemplation and celebration via electric slide guitar, celtic vibes, acoustic wistfulness and sing-along choruses.



Atmospheric, whispery vocals and shimmery synth sounds on Yoko Ono's Listen, The Snow Is Falling, evoke the suspended reality and hush of fresh snowfall. The dreamy country-folk of Drunken Angel gives way to the boisterous The St Stephen's Day Murders, with Mark Radcliffe as Shane McGowan to Thea's Kirsty MacColl. Like Fairytale of New York - Thea's favourite Christmas song - it makes you want to be there in the back of an Irish pub, a little the worse for wear, with your arms around a ring of companions, swaying and singing at the top of your chops. Tracks quoting Louis MacNiece and referencing TS Eliot rub shoulders with the unashamed commercialism of the album's Christmas single, That'll be Christmas... Bouncy, catchy, hummable, it's potentially slightly at odds with the rest, skirting the edge of being too cosy, but she gets away with it. Resistance is futile and you're left with a smile of recognition and feeling all warm inside.

I recently produced BBC Four's The Christmas Session (see clip below), for which Thea and her husband-producer-guitarist-sometime co-writer Nigel Stonier turned up mid-tour to Shoreditch Town Hall, gamely donned Dickensian top hats and tails and immediately launched into a version of her Christmas single, helped out by folk musicians they'd never met before that afternoon.

Multi-faith, inter-faith or no faith - whatever, there's plenty of spirit there.



Thea Gilmore - Midwinter's Toast (outtake from BBC Four Christmas Session)

BBC Four's Christmas Session is on Thursday 17 December at 9pm and Christmas Eve at 10.30pm. See the website more transmission details.

Elvis Presley - Elvis' Christmas Album (RCA, 1957)



Released in 1957, Elvis' festive mixture of rock 'n' croon sounds pretty tame now but back then it caused its fair share of upset, at least on the secular numbers. Presley asked Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller, the hit-making songwriters behind Jailhouse Rock and Hound Dog, to bring new material to the sessions. The result, Santa Claus Is Back in Town, opens the album in salacious fashion. Elvis singing, "Hang up your pretty stockings/And turn off the light/Santa Claus is comin' down your chimney tonight" is a fine addition to the canon of 50s filth wrapped up in metaphor. Surprisingly Presley's cover of White Christmas also caused controversy when composer Irving Berlin called for it to be banned on account of its "profane parody of his cherished yuletide standard". It's actually a pretty straight-up rerun of The Drifters' rendition that topped the R&B charts a few years before. For some reason Mr Berlin kept any objections to that version to himself. Personally, I tend to skip the gospel numbers that close the album but other highlights include the definitive version of Blue Christmas and the jaunty Santa, Bring My Baby Back (To Me). Elvis released his second Noel LP in the early 70s but it's not hard to see why this one remains the best-selling Christmas album of all time.



Elvis performs Blue Christmas on the 68 Comeback Special

It would be easy to rewrite history and declare that every Christmas my family would listen to Phil Spector's A Christmas Gift To You, but we just weren't that cool.

As far as Howe Christmas family traditions go, I only remember two, watching Morecombe and Wise after tea on Christmas Day, and my mum putting on Jim Reeves' Twelve Songs of Christmas on the record player each Christmas day morning as we had pork pie for breakfast and welcomed in our next door neighbour for a sherry. This was the late 70s after all.

I knew little of Jim Reeves at the time I found his singing hugely irritating, but he was a huge star in suburbia and I am sure soothed a million housewives with his easy listening take on country and western.

Jim Reeves died in a plane crash in the mid 60s and inevitably his mellow baritone voice, accompanied by muted velvet orchestration, gained greater success after his death with umpteen compilations. Although he is never talked of in the same cool tones as other crooners such as Andy Williams or Frank he was definitely up there in the cardigan stakes. Check out the cover if you don't believe me.

The album itself doesn't hold any great surprise, all the classics are there (Jingle Bells, White Christmas, Mary's Boy Child, O Little Town of Bethlehem) but my favourite has always been Silver Bells for no other reason than it makes me feel all Christmassy. Very little else does.

YouTube: Jim Reeves' Silver Bells

Christmas With Johnny Cash (Sony Legacy, 2003)

Family, religion and cheesiness are hallmarks of the Christmas record and also ingredients that country music, more than any other genre, has in spades. It's no surprise then that during his long career the Man in Black released a number of festive albums and in the 70s hosted an annual seasonal TV special.

This 2003 album compiles a mixture of traditional carols, originals and standards that Cash recorded from the 60s to the 80s. His prison concerts, American Recordings albums and the film Walk the Line have helped etch a popular image of Cash as a lawless wild man. In truth he was never shy of the saccharine and even his 1963 version of Blue Christmas is awash with backing vocals. A gem from the '63 album is The Christmas Sprit, a recitation that imagines people on Christmas Eve around the world and gives listeners the chance to hear Cash speak German and try an English accent.

His baritone is obviously well suited to carols and the ones here are full-on production numbers with brass and choirs; Away in the Manger features a spoken-word segment that's like hearing the greatest ever nativity play narrator. The real curio comes at the end. Christmas As I Knew It is a previously unreleased rehearsal from one of the TV shows in which Johnny recalls the poverty of his childhood Christmas in Arkansas. Turkey? Little John had make do with a squirrel his dad killed.

Johnny Cash & Daughters sing Silent Night

Yellowman - A Very, Very Yellow Christmas (Ras, released 1998)

Like much of the festive season, it's all in the anticipation. Maybe you're a fan of Yellowman's mastery of slack dancehall and the wit and verve of his toasting wordplay. Or maybe you just love a really, really literal nickname. You happen upon that cover and feel a touch of sadness that they put one of reggae's greats in a pound shop Santa hat and told him to smile sweetly. The beauty of A Very, Very Yellow Christmas is its barefaced cash-in novelty; if it came with a free pen with a nudey lady picture you wouldn't be surprised. The cut-and-paste title hilarity of the work - Yellowman Is Coming to Town, Children Saw Mommy Kissing Yellowman - have the ring of a ten-to-five decision about them, and so what. There are very few redeeming features here - Santa Claus Never Comes to the Ghetto is probably the zenith, but you won't care after your fifth glass of ginger wine. Zungguzungguguzungguzeng it ain't, but I'll take this over Phil Spector any day of the week. I love Yellowman. Christsploitation at its best.

YouTube: Listen to Santa Claus Never Comes to the Ghetto

Christmas on Death Row (Death Row, 1996)

Ho, Ho, Ho Fool! The best thing about Christmas on Death Row is its cover. Sadly the contents of this compilation would fail to make even the most pimped up, padded of stockings feel PHAT.

Once home to the biggest names in West Coast rap, Death Row Records at the end of '96 was in dire trouble. Tupac was dead, Dre had left the crumbling enterprise to form Aftermath Entertainment and his erratic co-founder Suge Knight was sent to prison.

You can hear the creative drain on this disc, as we're served up a bland collection of R&B cuts of well-known carols, (Silent Night, Silver Bells, White Christmas - even Frosty The Snowman) from a dwindling roster including 6 Feet Deep, Danny Boy, Michel'le and Guess.

Snoop and Nate Dogg put in the most notable turn, with their take on James Brown's Santa Claus Goes Straight To The Ghetto to open proceedings, but it's a slippery sled on a downward trajectory.

Twelve years after this release, Snoop swapped his reindeer for 'two blue-nosed pitbulls' on Christmas in the Dogghouse (Doggystyle Records, 2008) in the hope that people might have forgotten that novelty hip-hop records are a waste of money.

Some gangstas never learn.

YouTube: Listen to Snoop and Nate Dogg's Santa Claus Goes Straight To The Ghetto

Bugge Wesseltoft - It's Snowing On My Piano (ACT, released 1997)

Best known for modern jazz albums, Bugge Wesseltoft surprises in many ways with this recording of 12 Christmas songs.

In his first and only solo piano recording, the Norwegian musician, composer and producer manages to remove all the kitsch and to get back to the soul of mostly traditional Scandinavian and European songs. The weirdly familiar sounding, warm and intimate interpretations are all improvisations with episodic bursts and textures. Throughout, however, the work is distinguished by a hypnotic simplicity. When listening carefully, you will discover numerous beautiful details and clearly recognise Wesseltofts nu-jazz influences in rhythm and structure as well as his roots in the Scandinavian jazz movement with its particular sentiment.

This timeless record is a rare exception for Christmas albums.

Bugge Wesseltoft - It's Snowing On My Piano

James Brown - Funky Christmas (Spectrum, 2001)

James Brown at Christmas, what could be wrong with that? Not much as it turns out, as this compilation drawn from his 1966 and 1972 Christmas albums proves. It's true that some of it is a bit bizarre, with JB sounding strangely like Bob Dylan on Merry Xmas Baby, and at times it veers into the cheesy, as on his version of Mel Torme's Christmas Song, but taken as a whole this is a heartfelt and soulful album. James hollers, croons and proclaims in a manner which makes one think he could be the perfect company over the Yuletide season. He expresses a social concern on Santa Claus Go Straight To The Ghetto, works the funk on Soulful Christmas and encourages us to pray for peace on Christmas Is Love. And with the 25th marking the third anniversary of The Godfather's death, this compilation could be the perfect way of remembering one of the 20th century's most charismatic performers.

You Tube: Listen to James Brown's Soulful Christmas

Various Artists, A Damaged Christmas Gift for You (Damaged Goods, released 2009)

What's not to like about a festive collection that starts with Holly Golightly's couldn't-be-cuter cover of Christmas Tree on Fire and rocks on through a raucously foul-mouthed number from Wild Billy Childish and the MBE's, a bluegrass-y Ding Dong Merrily on High from the brilliantly monikered Singing Loins, and an oi! punk-styled take on Stop the Calvary? Nothing, absolutely nothing. A Damaged Christmas Gift for You, titled in celebration of (or to poke fun at - your call) the Phil Spector classic, is probably the most fun festive disc to find its way to stores this year. Only, it's not actually available physically - right now this is a download only, although the Powers That Be hope to get it out 'properly' next year. And they should be encouraged to, as The Buff Medways' Merry Christmas Fritz needs to find its way to as many homes as possible. It's just one of a number of brilliantly upbeat and unusual tracks compiled here. Bonkers, boisterous, cantankerous and cacophonous, this set (which, if you hadn't worked out as much, features seasonal cuts from the Damaged Goods stable) is pure audio glee, albeit a kind best complemented by several pints of lager rather than a sensible single mulled wine.

You Tube: Listen to Holly Golightly's Christmas Tree On Fire

Various Artists - New Orleans Christmas (Putumayo, released 2006)

"You see a Dixieland Santa Claus, leading the band / To a good 'ole creole beat..." If you like a bit of gumbo on your (presumably gingerbread) yuletide biscuit, Putumayo's compilation of New Orleans festivity may well please. Featuring some stalwarts of the city's rich musical tradition (Ellis, father of the Marsalis dynasty, appears here with a coolly-swinging piano trio God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen), the highlights of this collection however come courtesy of a younger generation. Trumpeter and singer James Andrews brings a new sound to Louis Armstrong's Christmas in New Orleans, while on hearing New Birth Brass Band's grin-inducing Santa's Second Line you realise all you wanted for Christmas was funk played on a tuba. For the most part, this is uplifting stuff dominated by the characteristic sound of the Dixieland frontline (the interweaving melodic lines of trumpet, trombone and clarinet), shuffling snare-drum swing and call-and-response figures thrown back and forth between lead singer and others in the band. A chance to draw breath comes in the polished ballads from Banu Gibson and Topsy Chapman, which, though tastefully-arranged, sound a bit easy-listening safe, more post-dinner Edam than flaming pudding. Packed with chirruping clarinets and parping trombones, this is a compilation to accompany Christmas Day cheer, but one to avoid during resultant Boxing Day grogginess.

Righto, keeping this month's instalment of the best albums of the past month (as assessed by BBC Music's ever-open-minded review team) brief, as there are more important things to be thinking about.

Firstly, there's the Christmas Records series, where we're profiling a different festive album every day throughout advent. So far we've had Tori Amos, Sufjan Stevens, the cast of Star Wars alongside Jon Bon Jovi (!) and more.

And soon it'll be time to reveal our albums of the year (a work in progress right now). We'll have a list for every one of BBC Music's genre categories, and let me tell you that competition is fierce. Every contributing writer has had the chance to submit their personal favourites, and the final lists will be published in the first week of January. Personally, my favourite album of 2009 is probably P***** Jean's King of Jeans, but something tells me that won't be our overall number one for Rock & Indie, such is the quality of the competition.

A quick note on the below: all the artists selected this month are operating outside of mainstream circles, but absolutely deserve wider attention. So don't be afraid - click to listen to something brand new to your ears and who knows, you might just like it.

2652 - Unbalance

(Tectonic, released 2 November)

Writes reviewer Colin Buttimer: "Unbalance sketches views of a cybernetic near future that touches a number of bases, from dubstep and broken beat to the Detroit-tinged breakbeat sci-fi of Jacob's Optical Stairway. Yet it's more than the sum of its influences, with a sense of great confidence and a real attention to texture."

Read the full review of Unbalance

2652 artist page

2652, Flashback (audio only)

Royal Bangs - Let It Beep

(City Slang, released 23 November)

Writes reviewer Mike Diver: "Varied but never lacking cohesion, Let It Beep is a charming and entirely unforeseen hit for tastes demanding their rock a little rough-hewn and happily unaffected. That it makes fellow Tennessee types Kings of Leon sound as sonically redundant as U2 and Oasis is merely an accidental bonus."

Read the full review of Let It Beep

Royal Bangs artist page

Video: Royal Bangs, Poison Control (live)

Jesca Hoop - Hunting My Dress

(Last Laugh Records, released 30 November)

Writes reviewer Rob Crossan: "A sensual, eccentric and often frankly odd-sounding record, Hoop's second album exudes oodles of charisma and originality, thanks mostly to her delightfully freaky take on traditional folk convention. It's clear that this hotly tipped talent is fully deserving of the current buzz around her."

Read the full review of Hunting My Dress

Jessica Hoop artist page

Video: Jesca Hoop, Four Dreams (live at London's Union Chapel)

Memory Tapes - Seek Magic

(Something in Construction, released 16 November)

Writes reviewer Mike Diver: "The work of one man, New Jersey-based Dayve Hawke, Memory Tapes' sound is immediately accessible but entirely capable of haunting your thoughts when it's not filling your ears. It's evocative of a thousand records you've heard before, and hundreds you own, but bafflingly unique, as if the recognisable elements have never before been assembled quite as exquisitely."

Read the full review of Seek Magic

Memory Tapes artist page

Memory Tapes, Bicycle (audio only)

King Midas Sound - Waiting for You

(Hyperdub, released 9 November)

Writes reviewer Louis Pattison: "Kevin Martin and Roger Robinson's debut album for Steve 'Kode9' Goodman's Hyperdub imprint shares some of the hallmarks of Martin's The Bug project; a musical grounding in dub and dancehall, with lyrics steeped in the grit and danger of city living and often shaded with religious notions of sin and salvation. Heavy with urban dread but awake to the promise of a better life, Waiting for You feels like a hard-won victory - the kind that tastes all the sweeter."

Read the full review of Waiting for You

King Midas Sound artist page

Video: King Midas Sound, Meltdown (audio only)

The Clientele - Bonfires on the Heath

(Pointy, released 30 November)

Writes reviewer Chris White: "It's probably inevitable that a group like London's The Clientele are destined to remain undeservedly obscure. Yet those prepared to seek them out will discover some of the most heartbreakingly lovely, perfectly formed music to be recorded anywhere over the past decade. By buying this album, you will be doing your bit to help maintain one of Britain's most unheralded but genuine musical treasures."

Read the full review of Bonfires on the Heath

The Clientele artist page

The Clientele, Jennifer and Julia (audio only)

Related Links

This week's album reviews

Tori Amos - Midwinter Graces (Island, released 2009)

Not really regarded as an artist who embodies any sense of festive cheer, Tori Amos nevertheless decided to make her eleventh studio LP a Christmassy affair, and the end product is a diverting, if inconsistent, listen. Devoid of the over-produced arrangements that plagued her Abnormally Attracted to Sin album of earlier in 2009 - a record that rewarded patience but didn't make things easy going for the non-hardcore listener - Midwinter Graces has an appealing skip in its step on numbers like Pink and Glitter, Harps of Gold and Star of Wonder. When it slows, it can do so with an understated elegance that Amos has only sporadically summoned during the 00s. There's an effortless beauty to A Silent Night With You, its strings stirring without ever overpowering the singer's position in the mix, and Winter's Carol is the record's emotional heart. But missteps do sour the experience rather, very much the sprouts left on the plate, rendering Midwinter Graces an example of a single-artist Christmas album that's very much nearly but not quite in the grand pantheon of ilk releases. Fans will love Amos's unexpected foray into such themes, but its lack of depth and longevity (not helped by its subject matter, of course) consign it to the curio pile, rather than that stacked with seasonal classics.

YouTube: Listen to Tori Amos' Pink and Glitter

Low - Christmas (Kranky, released 1999)

The inherent theology behind Christmas (the event) dictates that only rare artists with prominent religious leanings truly seem to capture the spirit of the season in music. Put simply, they need to believe for you to follow suit. The decade-old Christmas EP from famously Mormon 'slowcore' pioneers Low is one prime indie-rock triumph. Seamlessly interchanging originals with standards, they mine every emotion associated with the time of year - instead of mindless joy - with beguilingly childlike innocence. For butterflies-jangling expectation, see Just Like Christmas; Blue Christmas is laced with the melancholy of a sometimes-deflating month; Taking Down the Tree distils empty post-12 days lows when cold New Year months are all that remains to anticipate. "Despite the commerce involved," Low collectively chirp in the sleeve-notes, "we hope you will consider this our gift to you." Faced with such timelessly sweet sentiments, baby Jesus himself might have shed a tear.

You Tube: Listen to Low's Just Like Christmas

Sufjan Stevens - Songs for Christmas (Asthmatic Kitty, released 2006)

Parumpa-pa-pa! Always the most versatile of Santa's musical elves, Sufjan Stevens' Christmas songs set is one of the most lovingly compiled Yuletide releases. First released in 2006, Songs for Christmas comprises not only a poster of Sufjan looking grumpy in a Santa hat (almost worth the money alone), stickers and a songbook, but also five CDs of songs that were created over five Christmases with the help of the Reader's Digest Christmas Songbook. The songs are a mixture of original compositions and indelibly Sufjan-esque takes on traditional favourites like Little Drummer Boy and Jingle Bells. It's an especially useful stocking gift thanks to its ability to unite cool cousins and old aunties in humming the same songs.

Sufjan Stevens - Put the Lights on the Tree

Halford - Halford III: Winter Songs (Metal God Records, released 2009)

Well, few could have seen this one coming: for his first solo album in over seven years, Judas Priest mainman Rob Halford has decided to get festive, mixing original thrashers with metal-centric versions of much-loved carols including Oh Holy Night and Come All Ye Faithful. On paper it's an unmitigated disaster of a project; on disc (and subsequently through speakers) it's a surprisingly sprightly, entertaining (in a guilty pleasures sort of way) release that seems to have been crafted with respect for the material at hand. Winter Song is a tender number that keeps its crunched chords on a tight leash, and comprises a highlight alongside another original, Get Into the Spirit, which is all frenetic riffs and bat-bothering high-pitched vocals. At the other end of the quality spectrum we've Halford's take on We Three Kings - impossible to fully describe here, it's the sort of recording that'll leave you in tears. Hopefully of laughter.

Video: Halford, Get Into the Spirit

Meco - Christmas in the Stars (Rhino, reissued 1996. Original release 1980)

Many who grew up with the Star Wars movies in the late 70s and early 80s curse George Lucas for trashing their childhood memories with his lousy prequels and digital tinkering of the original trilogy. Released in 1980 and produced by Meco, the man behind the hit disco version of the Star Wars theme, this album is proof that George has never been shy of making a quick buck from the most woeful exploitation of his intergalactic characters.

The album's conceit is that a factory of droids are mindlessly making toys for Santa Claus but only understand the true meaning of Christmas once tin-can duo C3-P0 and R2-D2 explain it to them in as mawkish a manner as possible. This results in such dismal ditties as R2-D2 We Wish You A Merry Christmas and What Can You Buy A Wookie For Christmas (When He Already Owns A Comb?). Sadly Darth Vader does not appear to tell Luke Skywalker, "I felt your presents".

Perhaps the oddest thing about Christmas in the Stars is that lead vocals are courtesy of an 18-year-old Jon Bon Jovi, billed here as John Bonjiovi, and whose cousin Tony produced the album at his Power Plant studio in New York.

As a geeky curiosity one listen is tolerable but only a deluded fool would shell out the £50 the CD now retails for online. The force is weak with this one.



What Can You Get A Wookie For Christmas (When He Already Owns A Comb)?

Pet Shop Boys - Christmas (Parlophone, released 2009)

The Christmas song, which occupies a similar place in the nation's hearts as the football single, returns in earnest this winter - but few contemporary pop artists can command the respect of the Pet Shop Boys. So, this EP demands our attention, collecting as it does selections from a triumphant year, alongside a menacingly eloquent cover of Madness' My Girl. It all works surprisingly well. It Doesn't Often Snow at Christmas is elevated from fan-only release, which might have been a mistake were it not so damn jolly (despite the pithy "Families fighting beside a plastic tree"). However, the real find here is the hymn-like, All Over the World, a single-in-waiting from their last album Yes. This new version is huge, as though a request for one coach-load of orchestra was obviously misheard as three. It is OTT, but admirably restrained in camp. The EP is completed by Domino Dancing's synth line lightly underpinning an effective interpretation of Viva La Vida, which comes across as a more fun than one might expect from a Coldplay cover.

Pet Shop Boys, It Doesn't Often Snow at Christmas (TV appearance, 2000)

Tomorrow... Christmas with R2-D2 and C3-P0

While we'd love to give BBC Music Blog readers a delicious chocolate treat every day of advent, technology isn't quite that advanced. So, in lieu of a calendar packing tasty morsels behind cartoon packaging, we're taking a look at a different Christmassy album from today 'til the rotund red-clothed fellow comes calling on 25 December.

We'll be highlighting our favourites, bona-fide classics, an assortment of new releases and some from the piles marked weird, wonderful and just a little woeful. Do let us know what you think of our selections and also suggest your own.

First up is an attempt at Christmas cool from the mid-90s.

Various Artists - Just Say Noël (Geffen, released 1996)

You have to admire this set's intentions: "Can today's young artists create seasonal ditties that glow with all the spirit and warmth of the time-honoured classics? This album dares to say, 'Yes! Oh yes indeed!'" But despite Beck's dropping of some "Hanukkah science" on robo-funk opener The Little Drum Machine Boy (see what he did there?) not everything that follows is worthy of repeated festive revival. But with portions of the proceeds going towards human rights charity Witness its heart was in the right place, and the eclectic cast - from Elastica to Remy Zero via XTC and Aimee Mann - is sure to flick a few indie switches today. Beck's bonkers ramble is equalled in the what-the-heck? stakes by Sonic Youth's cover of Martin Mull's Santa Doesn't Cop Out on Dope - "Just leave him cookies / and save the joint" - and The Roots' Millie Pulled a Pistol on Santa takes De La Soul's original and cranks the tension via sparse beats and icy production. It's not always pretty, then, and certainly not as memorable as its compilers might've hoped; but Just Say Noël might well appeal to the person in your life who typically sees their glass of eggnog half empty.

XTC's Thanks For Christmas

Tomorrow... a Christmas treat from the Pet Shop Boys.