The Great Christmas Record Odyssey, Ep. XC

Don thee now thy festive jam-pants, children. . . 

Album Title:  Christmas with The Canadian Brass and the Great Organ of St. Patrick's Cathedral

Album Artist:  The Canadian Brass

Picked this lil' baby up at Radio Wasteland a few weeks ago, and for $2 - a click up from the dusty Dollar Bin, if you will, but still cheap enough that if you listened to it once and promptly discarded it you wouldn't feel sick to your stomach.  The cover art looked, to me, chintzy enough that it might make an entertaining album review at the very least.  I'm fine dropping a couple bucks for an hour of Yuletide audio scrutinizing.

Well, what we're faced with here is a pretty interesting record, to say the least.  I'll just come out and say it right out of the gate, folks:  this one ain't half bad.  Surprising, to say the least, considering the holly, jolly group of assholes we have on the cover, here.  

But yeah. . . not bad at all.

The track list on the this release is respectable:  mostly religious Christmas carols, but that's not necessarily a terrible thing, especially when given an instrumental offering such as this.  The Canadian Brass (I assume their from Canada) play the listed songs as a quintet, and it's exactly what you'd expect it to sound like.  A guy on french horn, two on trumpet, a trombonist (tromboner?), and a guy on the tuba, playing mostly religious Christmas carols.  It's a hell of a lot of brass to deal with, for sure, but the arrangements are done in a way that it's not overpowering (something sooo many Holiday albums in the past have butchered with over-zealous composers over-using their brass sections.)

Oddly enough, these five guys team up with the 'Great Organ of St. Patrick's Cathedral' for many of these songs (this cathedral must be in Boston, right?)  A little random, because a quintet of brass instruments and a large, cathedral-ish organ don't really go together like, say, gin and tonic.  When the organ's quiet, it almost compliments the brass instruments in the same way that a bass guitar might compliment a lead guitar, in that it provides background texture and subtle tone without overpowering the leading melodies.  That's just fine, but on occasion the organist plays too loud and it sounds like he's trying to get these random Canadians to pack up their shit and get the hell out of his church.

All in all, this is a really random album that makes some pretty decent background music.  I was really, really hoping this evening to get a chance to write up yet another funny album review - possibly eviscerate this corny five-piece with my clever wit and drop a '2' rating or something - but I'm gonna have to disappoint all you folks.  It's scoring a lot higher than I had expected it to:  the only faults I can find with it are 1.) after two sides of listening to just brass, you kinda wish they had the rest of the orchestra show up (some strings and percussion, namely), and 2.) the organ could've been kept to a background role and no one would've suffered for it.

That's it, that's my gripe.  

I apologize again for this entry being lame.  I'm just as weirded out by all of this as you are.

VERDICT:  6/10 - Decent (Umm. . . who would've thought five Canadians playing brass instruments alongside a Boston cathedral's pipe organ would sound halfway decent?  Not this guy.  I think I'll be keeping this one for future use, but doubt it'll make it into regular rotation this year.)

- SHELVED -

- Brian