Okay, people.
Halloween is dead.
Thanksgiving is only a real holiday if you're obsessed with food and drama.
Therefore, I have the honor and privilege of informing you that we are now, officially, in the Holiday Pre-Season.
And that, dear readers, can mean only one thing. . . .
The Great Christmas Record Odyssey.
If you like pompous know-it-alls in their mid-40's who act as if they have some kind of authority on a super random - albeit obscure - piece of pop culture, look no further. Yours Truly has spent nearly a decade hunting down and amassing stacks upon stacks of Christmas Records. From the dusty shelves of thrift stores, to the dollar bins at record stores, to the hunting down of limited edition, color-pressings of new albums online, I have collected and deeply analyzed (and, more often than not, thrown out) nearly a hundred and fifty albums thus far. All of them celebrating the most glorious time of the year.
Seeing how it's the first installment of this year's season of vinyl scrutinization, I'll once again direct your attention to the sacred rating scale we use around these parts:
10 - . . . And Out Come the Wolves (Perfection. Don't believe me? Name a better punk album. I'll wait.)
9 - Cowabunga! (I'm Gen-X, guys - for people in my age group, this term encapsulates the feeling of being round-house kicked across the face by a Ninja Turtle. But in a good way.)
8 - Awesome (Solid, without any major faults. Worthy of repeated spins during the Holidays. )
7 - Pretty Rad (Generally, in order for an album of mine to stay in Holiday Season Rotation, it needs to be rated '7' and up.)
6 - Decent (This is the point where it gets dicey. Once and awhile a '6' makes it into constant rotation, but only if it satisfies a previously-vacant Holiday music niche. These albums almost always get 'Shelved': I hold on to them - for the time being - but they lose turntable time for the duration of the Season.)
5 - Meh (This is the dime-a-dozen wasteland, where you find your Julie Andrews and your Percy Como's. Anything below this point is almost always put into my annual 'Donate to Goodwill' pile.)
4 - Borophyll (There may be some redeeming qualities here that might make albums at this score appeal to some people, but definitely not to Yours Truly.)
3 - Seriously? (Comically bad, if you will.)
2 - Reality TV (There's only one thing shittier than Reality TV, gang. . . .)
1 - Ohio (Do I really have to explain this?)
Word. Now that everyone's been refreshed with how shit works around here, let's just go ahead and kick of this frickin' most magical time of year, shall we. . .
Album Title: Everybody's Christmas Favorites
Album Artist: Sy Mann
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First of all, just to clear the air here, maybe you guys were consulted prior to this album's naming, but Yours Truly was not. To have the audacity to assume these guys just recorded the twelve, greatest Christmas songs of all time is staggering. Just who the hell do you think you are, Sy Mann?
I, for one, sure as hell do not consider any one of these tracks among my 'Christmas Favorites.' Not a single one of my top Holiday jams feature organs and/or chimes, so I'm calling bullshit on this one right out of the gate. Now - just to play Devil's Advocate, here - let's just go out on a limb and assume that the album title-er (title-ist?) was referring to the original carols, instead of this album's specific versions of them. Okay, well then. . . maybe.
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'Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,' as I've stated in previous years, is definitely a banger. But there's dozens upon dozens of awesome, recognizable Christmas songs out there, so to say that these twelve are the best is just, well, stupid. I mean, based on the album jacket here - featuring a Charlie Brown-ish tree someone decided to decorate with pine cones instead of ornamentation of any kid - I'm going out on a limb here and guessing they didn't yet have access to the technology that would have made large-scale data collection a possibility.So, basically, Sy Mann and the people behind this album are just a big, fat collection of liars.
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Speaking of Sy Mann, let's take a closer look at what he does on this particular Holiday offering. Guys, I've found over the last decade or so of doing this Christmas record reviewing thing, that if you've heard one 'organs and chimes' album, you've heard 'em all. With the exceptional curve ball thrown in - maybe there's a church choir singing along, maybe someone brings in some hand bells for accents here and there, etc. - all these frickin' albums sound the same.
You've got your church organ. And not a cool, 60's Hammond organ, like what you'd hear from The Animals or The Doors. No, this is that warble-y kind you hear at a small, congregational church that's steered along through the dusty sheet music by a shriveled crone in a moth-ball scented, yarn cardigan. Is it played well? Uhh. . . I guess? I mean, the songs sound like the songs are supposed to sound, there's no jazzing them up at all or improvisation going on here. Anywhere. They bought the sheet music and had someone (probably Ethel, that skank) play it for them. You know, like a piano teacher.
Then, you've got your chimes. These aren't taking center stage at all, guys - old lady warble organ's got that locked down - instead serving as anchor notes, and occasionally the treble melody. No solos anywhere, no dynamic mastery of these large, metal tubes. Just 7th grade concert band -level competence.
Which, if you've followed this blog at all over the course of the last decade, is a hell of a lot better than some of the horrors that are out there - trust me.
There are maybe a couple other distinct features on this album, aside from the aforementioned organ and chimes, that I feel I should touch on briefly. The curve ball, if you will. First, the recording levels on this album are kinda weird; when just one instrument is playing, the volume levels are fine. Just the organ? No issues. Just chimes? No issues. But if the organ is playing and then the chimes break in? Well, that's just too damn much for the church microphones to handle, folks; the organ's volume drops considerably, and vice versa. . . like the two instruments are crowding in on the same input channel and sapping one another's volume when things get too compressed.
It's reminds me of watching Charlie Watts abstain from hitting the hi-hat when he smacks his snare drum.
Lastly, spread out throughout the entirety of both sides of this album, we have ourselves some xylophone trills here and there. Again, nothing fancy, just the usual feeling of bored band kids playing a Christmas concert for their parents in an over-crowded, stuffy, school gymnasium. Honestly, I wouldn't have even noticed had I not been lulled into a pre-conceived notion of this album's sound, which was based solely on it's promise of the exclusivity of 'organ' and 'chimes.' God knows Sy Mann could have mentioned said xylophone on his album cover.. . . but, as we previously established, Sy Mann is a big, fat liar.
VERDICT: 4/10 - Borophyll (Another snoozefest of an 'organs and chimes' album, performed at a level of mastery somewhere in between '7th grade band student' and '82-year-old church lady with nothing left to live for.')
- SHELVED -
- Brian
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