For the second year in a row, I've not found any Christmas albums about which to get excited. The flagship compilation is Holiday Fun, featuring the usual list of hipster musicians and sold by (at least) Amazon, eMusic, and Starbucks, giving it ubiquity; however, it lacks any notable or innovative contributions. Tracey Thorn offered Tinsel and Lights, which maintains her Everything-but-the-Girl post-Ben Watt's electronica phase middle-age melancholy: satisfying song-writing, but not much for holiday cheer. I've also been downloading some Johnny Cash Christmas albums from Freegal, but lest's be honest: this isn't the work for which he'll be remembered.
This year, I recommend you save yourself some money and go to Noisetrade. There, you will find Fireplace Songs and the Paste Holiday Sampler to just as satisfying as anything for which you'd shell out shekels this year.
On the upside, I found a new Christmas beer! The famed Spoetzl brewery of Shiner, Texas, is now offering Holiday Cheer, a "Dunkelweizen brewed with Texas peaches and roasted pecans." I last enjoyed wheat beers around the time I wed Mrs. Curmudgeon (I remember drinking Samuel Adams' Summer Ale during our July honeymoon), but Holiday Cheer has none of the yeast and granular feel on the tongue to which I object. Maybe it's the darker wheat, or maybe it's the peach sugars, but it's refreshing and, simultaneously, bold enough to stand up to other winter ales. I recommend drinking it all by its lonesome in order to appreciate the complex interaction of the flavors.
Get a six-pack of Holiday Cheer, and you may not need a ground-breaking Christmas album.
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