The Great Christmas Record Odyssey, Ep. LXI

Welcome back, Internet, to America's Greatest Yuletide Event:

The Great Christmas Record Odyssey.

Perhaps you thought Covid may have sidelined this favorite Holiday tradition of Yours Truly.  I'm sure my wife was hoping so, but not even the dreaded 'Rona and the full, unbridled fury of 2020 could stop this festive, holly jolly train from continuing to chug on down to Christmasville.

Now, being the first installment in this year's season of vinyl reviewin', I'll once again direct your attention to the cherished rating scale we use around these parts:

10 - . . . And Out Come the Wolves (a symbol of perfection, and arguably one of the greatest albums made in the last twenty five years)

9 - Cowabunga! (if it makes you want to shout like a Ninja Turtle, you know it's good.)

8 - Awesome

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 (once and awhile a '6' makes it into constant rotation, but only if it satisfies a previously-vacant Holiday music niche.)

5 - Meh  (Albums in the 6 - 4 range almost always get 'Shelved.'  I hold on to them - for the time being - but they lose turntable time for the duration of the Season.)

4 - Borophyll

3 - Seriously? (anything below this point is put into my annual 'Donate to Goodwill' pile)

2 - Reality TV (there's only one thing shittier than Reality TV in my opinion, and that is. . .)

1 - Ohio (the Ninth Circle of Hell)

I've got a ridiculous amount of vinyl to go through this year, and, if previous years are any indication, I probably won't get through half of it.

And now, let us do this. . . who's ready for a bizarre, inter-holiday jam session?

Album Title:  Christmas with the Clancy Brothers

Album Artist:  The Clancy Brothers

Guys, this is just like that movie The Nightmare Before Christmas.  Remember that one?  Where the Halloween guy goes to Christmas Land (or whatever the hell it's called), and brings back all that he learns about their to his Halloween people?  And Santa Claus is kidnapped and the Halloween folks try to create their own Christmas, with multiple gags and comedic mischief all over the damn place?  Remember that?

This is kinda like that, except instead of a skeleton waltzing in to Christmas World, we have four drunken Irish guys stumbling in, reeking of whiskey and beer and wearing white, woolen sweaters.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Clancy Brothers.

These guys are some of my favorites, and I listen to them year-round - it's great Irish music, but it works when you're in the mood for folk music as well.  Along with their cohorts the Chieftains and the much more mainstream Pogues, they're pretty much the greatest traditional Irish group you can find.  You can imagine my delight, therefore, when I discovered that these paddies released a f***ing Christmas album decades ago.  That nobody bothered telling me about.

I picked up this NM/NM record on Discogs

- I saw a used copy on Amazon, but as a rule of thumb one should never buy a used record on Amazon - and spent about, oh, $10 or so on it.  

So, while there's nothing necessarily wrong with this particular offering, per se, it's not likely something I'm going to listen to regularly.  There are only three recognizable Christmas carols on the entire album, so the majority are traditional Irish arrangements about the holidays, and as such most of this albums sounds like a St. Patrick's Day offering.  Tin flutes instead of sleigh bells, fiddles instead of chimes, etc.  The only thing technically making this collection a 'holiday album' is that the Clancy Bros. are singing about Christmas and Jesus instead of, say, getting wasted and rising up against British occupation.  

Also, on a side-note, because their sound - and traditional Irish music in general - was so influential on creating Hobbit music in The Lord of the Rings, when you listen to this album you can almost hear what Christmas in the Shire would have sounded like. 

Which I bet would just be f***ing awesome.

VERDICT:  6/10 - Decent (If you weren't paying attention to the lyrics, you wouldn't even know it was a Christmas album.  And, because of this and this alone - because nobody talks shit about the Clancy Brothers in this house - it loses a few points.  Maybe I'll dust it off for St. Patrick's Day, who knows.)

- SHELVED -