Time for another installment of pre-Holiday Season weirdness, America.
Get your Jam Pants on. . .
Album Title: The Sounds of Christmas
Album Artist: Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians
I'm going to start this off by saying that this is a really, really bizarre album.
Now, you wouldn't really think it by merely looking at the album cover (though anyone who comes up with 'The Pennsylvanians' for an ensemble name is probably a bit weird.) If anything, one would think that, upon looking at the album artwork, this would be yet another 'down home Country Christmas' offering, focusing on vocal-heavy, organ-and-bell numbers the likes we've seen, oh, thirty or forty f***ing times already in this Great Christmas Odyssey of ours.I sure as hell did.
Well, you'd be wrong, folks. This album does indeed focus on the vocals - the Pennsylvanians are more or less a church choir, and they do their churchy choir thing as could be expected. Barely any musical instruments to be found here; you're more or less sitting in a church pew for this one, listening to your fellow parishioners belt out Holiday carols. Not terrible, for what it is. If that's your thing, you'd probably love this offering.
(Me? Not so much.)
What's really weird about this album is the random sound effects. When I read 'The Sounds of Christmas,' I assumed - like most folks probably would - that this referred to the various carols the choir was singing. Well, what it refers to is church bells, train whistles, the sounds of crowds and cars, etc. - basically anything the guys who mixed this down could get their hands on. I feel like some asshole with a reel-to-reel recorder was walking around the outside of the church, trying to get inside to record the choir, and accidentally had the recorder running as he was frantically trying to find the entrance.Not very professional, Fred Waring.
Sound effects aside, no song on this album is very long. They get about a minute into a song before they fade out and fade back in to the choir singing another Holiday carol. Sometimes it fades out back to church bell sound effects, other times it fades in to a children's choir, or organ music that doesn't have anything to do with what the choir was previously singing. I'm pretty sure the guy who mixed this album down was high as a kite.
Then, inexplicably, there's an ol' timey slave spiritual in the middle of Side A. I shit you not. Like, think Roots. It makes NO SENSE, and as I was playing this in the comfort of my Study, I literally glanced over my shoulder to make sure there weren't any African Americans standing in my backyard that might take offense to me playing this. The slave spiritual eventually transitions into a southern revivalist banger, as if a group of African American church-goers from the Deep South burst open the previous church's doors and hijacked the recording process for a song or two, then left without saying anything.
After a song or two of borderline racist-randomness, it goes right back to the boring, run-of-the-mill church choir warbling. With no previous indication that the slave spirituals and Black Church testifyin' ever happened. Did the elderly church choir even notice?
This album gives me anxiety.
VERDICT: 3/10 - Seriously? (Random sound effects and slave spirituals do not equate to Holiday music, Fred Waring. This album scores a pity point for being sooo random that I plan on keeping it among my Christmas collection just so I can play it for people once and awhile as proof of its existence.)
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