My Musical Advent Calendar

"Lumberjack Christmas" /
Sufjan Stevens

So while we're still in the market for dysfunctional Christmas songs...

If I wanted, I could do a musical advent calendar with just Sufjan Stevens songs; he records a Christmas EP every year, or at least he has since 2001, releasing them in 5-CD sets every few years. This one comes from his 2012 Christmas box set Silver & Gold; the track was actually recorded in 2006.

I keep meaning to listen to more of Sufjan Stevens' music. C'mon, I've gotta love an artist who proposes to do an album about each of the 50 states -- and starts with Michigan and Illinois. (He's originally from Michigan, Detroit-born in fact, but he now lives in, where else? Brooklyn.) I'm intrigued by the baroque layers of his recordings, too. But some of his music is so alternative it makes my head spin. I mean, I like quirky and I like absurdist, but at times it's too much work to figure out what he's trying to say.

Like this song:



It starts out all squeezeboxy Appalachian, with this mythic figure (the lumberjack?): "Oh, no, the rugged soul / The great backyard and the cold North Pole" but pretty soon that jaunty tune dumps us right back in our mundane lives -- "I resent that Santa went / And left us in the Alamo."  (Though in verse 2 Sufjan relents, believing optimistically that "Santa left / To save his kids from the winter cold.")

 Meanwhile, our singer is inviting someone (a lover? a beautiful stranger? us?) to have a Christmas drink and dance with him.  He's not one hundred percent sure about this Christmas thing, he admits in wistfully descending lines -- "I've got a premonition / That Christmas is a vision" -- but he's willing to give it a shot. Why not?

"If drinking makes it easy," he coaxes, "The music's kinda cheesy / The specials on the TV / Ho ho ho ho ho." How's that for ambivalent?

All the same, it's such a toe-tapping tune, he's already got me feeling festive.  So what if our modern commercialized Christmas is a big tinsel-wrapped fake?

And in the final section, he declares a sort of truce. "No one can save you from Christmases past," he sings blithely, resolutely pushing aside whatever bad Yuletide juju may have accumulated over the years.  "You'll have to love it or leave it at last." And as his perky chorus of singers repeats this mantra over and over, the scales definitely tip toward loving it.

'Cause why not? Might as well. Don't cost nothin'...

The Christmas Shuffle

Not Wednesday, sorry! Lately it seems I'm either a day behind or a day ahead of myself at every turn.  Perhaps it's best that I waited until today for this, though -- so you can hold this seasonal collection of tunes in your head all the way through Christmas day.

1. Postcard From London / Ray Davies with Chrissie Hynde
From The Kinks Choral Collection (2009)
Don't worry -- Ray and Chrissie were never in the same room when they recorded this "duet." Nevertheless, it was a brilliant move to have his ex add her vocals to this poignant number. Ray scores an emotional trifecta, wrapping three of his favorite themes -- Christmas, London, and long-lost love -- in one song.

2. I Told Santa Claus / Fats Domino 
From Christmas Is A Special Day (1993)
Mmm, this laidback boogie-woogie is one of my favorite Christmas classics. Fats has one request for the Man In Red -- he wants his baby to marry him. Yessiree -- "We'll have a boy for you / And a ten-pound girl for me," he croons happily. Was life ever this simple? Listening to Fats, you believe it could be.

3. "We Call It Christmas" / Keb' Mo'
From Christmas Calling (2003 various artists compilation)
I love it when Keb' gets his social conscience going, putting the blues on a back burner and reaching into his gospel/protest folk bag. Just listen to him testify about the power of the holiday season -- "It's bringing out the very best in all of us."  Amen, brother!

4. "Merry Christmas Baby" / The Beach Boys
From Christmas With the Beach Boys(1991 re-issue)
Man, did the Wilson brothers love holiday numbers -- maybe it's that seasonal Southern California yearning for snowy climes.  I've got their whole Christmas album in my iTunes, and I can never get enough of it.  Here Mike Love pleading with his ex to make up in time for Christmas -- like "Help Me Rhonda" with a wreath and spray-on snow.

5. "Merry Christmas, Baby" / Charles Brown and Bonnie Raitt
From A Very Special Christmas (2003 various artists compilation)
An entirely different song, Charles Brown's stellar contribution to the contemporary Christmas catalog.  Could this song be any sexier? Here's my original post...

6. "Christmas for Cowboys" / Jars of Clay
From Maybe This Christmas Tree (2003 various artists compilation)
A John Denver song, I think, but I love the way Jars of Clay earnestly lope their way through it.  These guys pretty much own the Christian alt-country niche as far as I'm concerned, and they never let it go corny. 

7. "Valley Winter Song" / Fountains of Wayne
From Welcome Interstate Managers (2005)
Wouldn't you know that FoW -- our great troubadors of suburban pop culture -- would have a Christmas song or two up their sleeves.? Okay, technically not a Christmas song (for that, you'd have to go to their "I Want An Alien For Christmas", from Out-Of-State Plates), but this sweet little song shimmers like a fresh snowfall.

8. "Get Behind Me, Santa" / Sufjan Stevens
From Songs For Christmas (2005)
No surprise that the defiantly unconventional Sufjan would release a five-disc Christmas album, mostly featuring sincere arrangements of traditional carols. But then there's this insanely fun original tune, subject of my very first Christmas song blog.

9. "Sock It To Me Santa" / Marshall Crenshaw
From A Home for the Holidays (1997 various artists compilation)
Add Marshall to that list of artists who really love Christmas novelty tunes -- I've got several MC numbers on my playlist, courtesy of a bootleg disc of Crenshaw rarities.  Here he has some rockabilly fun with a Bob Seger tune, featuring the inimitable James Brown reference,"Christmas ain't gonna be a drag / Santa's got a brand new bag!"  Take my word for it, Marshall's version knocks Seger's down cold.

10. "Zat You, Santa Claus?" / Buster Poindexter and His Banshees of Blues
From How Cool is Christmas (2006 various artists compilation)
Gotta love Buster's infectiously fun take on the old Louis Armstrong classic. Buster (aka David Johansen, aka Sri Rama Lama Ding Dong) has no shame about being theatrical, which is exactly what this jump-jive number craves. Merry Christmas, Buster!

"Get Behind Me, Santa" / Sufjan Stevens

Considering that every Christmas album on the market seems to involve tired rehashes of the same old standards, I must say I've warmed up to Sufjan Stevens's new Christmas album. It's packed with 42 songs, a collection of six EPs that Stevens released privately every Christmas for the past few years; now he's whacked them together in a box set. Many of the tracks are relatively faithful renditions of standard carols, which Sufjan delivers with simple acoustic arrangements and without irony -- now there's a startling concept -- and the earnest breathiness of his voice makes this go down surprisingly well.

I don't know exactly what to make of Sufjan Stevens. His music seems unclassifiable to me -- it sure isn't rock 'n' roll, or jazz, or blues of any kind; just call it alternative, I guess, and hope that folks'll be open-minded enough to appreciate the odd soundtrack-lush instrumentation and the quirky slice-of-life lyrics. But what really interests me about Sufjan's take on Christmas songs is that he seems to know he's swimming against the current, that our skeptical world prefers "bummer" Christmas songs and politically correct generic "holiday" music. And something about that bothers Sufjan.

"Get Behind Me, Santa" is a bouncy, ska-flavored number that skips around the culture clash Christmas has become. It's almost like a typo for "Get Behind Me Satan", so right away you know Santa is not coming down anybody's chimney unchallenged. He starts off with a jaundiced description of a trumped-up version of Santa Claus -- "I know what you're doing to me, boy / You move so fast, like a psychopathic color TV / With your Christmas bag and your jolly face/ And the reindeer stomping all over the place" -- but a second voice, a wobbly but sincere voice, pops up to protest "You make it sound like Christmas is a four-letter word." The first voice scoffs at the idea that Christmas is all about family or shopping or carols, but the other voice protests, "You've got it wrong because I'm just another regular guy / Simply 'cos I've affection for the Yuletide."

The song gets tangled up in its own arrangement, which builds up to backing vocals spelling out the word C-H-R-I-S-T-M-A-S; Sufjan's not going to peach to us about the meaning of Christmas. We've got to figure out for ourselves which side we want to come down on. But the light-heartedness of this track, that catchy horn section, the goofy organ vibrating through the bridge, makes me want to come down on the side of just being happy.

This is a fun song and you can dance to it; it isn't dripping with fake sentimentality or hipster scorn. The main thing is that Santa Claus is coming to town, and hey, it's the holiday season -- let's cut each other some slack, for once.