christmas music doesn't have to suck
Plus new music from the Alchemist, Badlands, Les Big Byrd, Halo Maud, and Eric Copeland & Josh Diamond
I consider myself very lucky that I can self-select when I start hearing Christmas music in the winter. I don’t work at Starbucks, I don’t go to that many chain stores, and my house isn’t particularly Christmas-inclined. So when I first heard the bleat of the Christmas music canon mid-November at the grocery store and exclaimed “Oh it’s X-mas music season!” I wasn’t ready for the dead-eyed glare I got back over the counter: I’ve been living in hell, welcome.
I’m here to tell you: it doesn’t have to be this way! It may feel like we’re all trapped in a Boomer-approved Hallmark Christmas loop, but if you dig just a little deeper, there’s a huge weirdo well of country heartache, John Waters-esque kitsch, novelty rap and bummer ballads celebrating the highs and lows of the holiday season (and, occasionally, Jesus).
Enter xmastimeradio.com’s “Xmas For Freaks,” curated station of musical holiday tidings you'd never hear waiting for a mall Santa. The collection was made by Ridgewood-based artist Denise Kupferschmidt, who created the station in 2020 while putting together music for her mom to listen to when she wasn't able to visit her for the holidays in person.
Kupferschmidt said, “I thought I would make a radio station for her that would play Christmas music 24/7. That way I could sort of be there, even if I couldn’t physically visit. I scoured the internet and tried to compile as much seasonal music that I thought she would enjoy as I could find, but while doing that I found a lot of music that she would definitely not be into. So I threw all of those songs into another radio station just for me, since I’m kind of into the holidays myself.”
The resulting “odds and ends” station Xmas for Freaks is over three days of Christmas oddities - novelty songs, forgotten Christmas album cuts, the obscure, the strange, the funky - and it’s more fun than any other Christmas playlist you’ll find this year.
So the next time someone starts to crank up the Bing Crosby, I implore you: put this on, crank up “Koibito Ga Santa Claus,” and let them know that they don’t have to live in a nightmare Nordstrom’s this holiday season.
And now - on to this week’s best tracks! As always, you can follow along on our playlists on Spotify and Apple Music, which update every Tuesday along with the newsletter.
UNSKIPPABLES #62
Mike, Wiki & The Alchemist - Be Realistic
A brooding, cello-laden production from the Alchemist for the B-side of his new single with Brooklyn rappers MIKE and Wiki. The Alchemist has one of the best ears for applying just enough music to take a track from a “vibe” to a song, without veering into major label gloss. Wiki and MIKE deliver strong “I don’t need no hook for this shit” energy that makes the ending refrain a true surprise.
Les Big Byrd - Katamaran
Swedish supergroup (Caesars, Viagra Boys and Teddybears) makes a full album of krautrock treats? I’m in! The whole thing is delightfully spaced out, but the instrumental “Katamaran” tops off with an extra dose of Neu! piano harmony for an extra sugar rush.
The Flaming Lips - Epic Systems Delirium
The Flaming Lips dropped a giant 20th anniversary reissue of Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots this week - their (imo) best album - and included dozens of live sessions, b-sides, and never-before-heard demos in the new release. There are some interesting working versions of “Do You Realize??” and “In The Morning of the Magicians,” but this unused demo caught my ear the most - exemplifying their best “Pet Sounds from outer space” side that made this era particularly beautiful and heartbreaking. It’s barely a sketch, but the hopeful optimism of Wayne Coyne’s ad libs and Steve Drozd’s sci fi comping kill me, even if the song is far from, well, a song.
Halo Maud - Pesnopoika
A searching, patient bit of psych-rock from the French experimental pop artist Halo Maud. The track leads a four-song EP of the same name, which is their first release since 2018’s Je suis une île, and it builds with layers of wooshing synths and Fripp-like guitar leads until it melts into a vocal breakdown at the 2:48 mark, pooling around Maud as she pleads “do you hear my voice??” until she is enveloped by a blanket-like choir of her multi-tracked voices - “there you are like a sound / a secret that resounds.”
Eric Copeland & Josh Diamond - Ta
A little late to this album - it came out late September - but this collaboration between Black Dice’s Copeland and Gang Gang Dance’s Diamond caught my ear after this lovely writeup from Matthew Schnipper on Deep Voices on the song “Blob” from the collaborative record:
It’s not exactly a conversation, more like two drunk bluesmen talking over each other, trying to get their point made. Then that just stops. Some keyboards shimmy into the spotlight for a bit and then the end of the song is quiet plucking. Is it a serious song? A silly one? A funky one? A meditative one? Yes and no. But yes. The music feels so, so true. Music made by lovers of sound for lovers of sound. It’s a lot to listen to. Which is a compliment.
THROWBACK CORNER
Skatt Bros - Life At The Outpost
I was thrilled when this 1980 country/disco track was featured in the opening episodes of the campy-but-good Welcome To Chippendales, where “Life At The Outpost” is used to soundtrack one of the first choreographed strip routines in the show. I found the song on the Pine Walk Collection, and was blown away by the “Village People At The Honky Tonk” concept. It’s weird and a little awkward, but the hook is guaranteed to stick in your head way longer than it has any right to.
That’s all for this week, folks. Please subscribe if you’d like these opinions straight in your inbox. See you next week!