The Great Christmas Record Odyssey, Ep. XCIII

Season's Greetings, folks (or should I say, Pre-Season's Greetings - we haven't had Thanksgiving yet, I guess that's still a holiday for some people.)

Album Title:  Enchanted Carols: A Feast of Christmas Music

Album Artist:  Various Artists (and more than a few Music Boxes)

Right out of the gate, I knew this one was gonna be weird.

The opening track of Side A features a loooooong intro of church bells clamoring in a swelling crescendo, announcing your entrance into the Realm of Insanity.  This sounds like all the bad parts of any Pink Floyd song you've ever heard (which, to be fair, is most of their music - I despise Pink Floyd.)  A 'street piano' (I'm assuming it's gangster) starts up out of nowhere, plinking along drunkenly, vaguely playing 'Hark the Herald Angels Sing,' then is abruptly cut off for no reason whatsoever.  Like, mid-measure cut off - musically it makes zero sense at all. It's as if the piano player (who clearly had downed a fifth of gin in mere minutes) finally succumbed to alcohol poisoning and fell off the piano bench.

Lucky bastard.

More bells follow, making no attempt at all at even attempting to form a comprehensible song - it's like the producers handed out the hand bells, music boxes, and other circa 1890 toy instruments to a special needs class and had the little bastards play to their hearts content.  Someone winds up a 'Regina Music Box' (of course), and that actually sounds like 'Hark the Herald Angels Sing' because, you know, it's a pre-constructed thing and there's no human element involved. A pirate-y 'roller organ' sounds out of nowhere and pays about sixteen bars of the same song, before being cut off at the sound board (in the middle of playing) and replaced by what I can only assume is a harpsichord.

So ends 'Track One.'

Folks, this is a really, really weird album.  Most of it sounds like a mad sprint through a Haunted Children's Museum (filled with dirty, porcelain dolls, creepy toys, and metallic, novelty 'instruments' from a bygone era) in the middle of the night.  Take that first track, for example:  I've heard a lot of renditions of 'Hark the Herald Angels Sing' in my day, but that is - by far - the creepiest.  

The second track  - 'A Virgin Most Pure' - is, fortunately, a step back towards the realm of normalcy:  there's a church choir singing in what I believe is Medieval English, accompanied by - of course - more f***ing hand bells.  It's not a recognizable Christmas song in the slightest, it just feels like archaic cathedral music. . . but at least it lacks the aforementioned terrors to which we were previously subjected.

'Jingle Bells' sounds like an ole timey, saloon bit, because that drunken piano player - who somehow did not die from alcohol poisoning earlier - roused himself and got back behind a 'penny piano.'  He still can't play for shit, and felt it necessary to haul this outdated instrument out of the Haunted Children's Museum and dust the sum'bitch off.  

This is the first entrance in a series that lasts the rest of Side A and most of Side B, and I'd go into more detail here but it's impossible to tell when one song ends and another begins, because they only play for about twelve measures or so before someone breaks out a different, tinny hand bell or winds up another metallic-sounding music box and plays whatever the hell they feel like.

I gotta say, this is one of the most jarring albums I've listened to in a long, long time.  I've reviewed other music box-centric Christmas albums in the past (I can't believe I just typed that sentence), but at least with those they played whole songs and there was some, small degree of continuity.  Here, the collection of 'instruments' (and calling them that is a definite stretch) are all thrown about the room with reckless abandon, to the point where you can't even call these tracks 'medleys' (though they do try to do so on the back of the album sleeve - nice try, guys.)

Behold - the Dead Christmas Baby.  

I've heard Middle School concert bands make better music than this.  You know what I think it is, this album almost sounds like it was recorded for insurance purposes.  Like the nefarious, old man who runs the Haunted Childrens Museum wanted to take out an insurance policy on his collection, and the insurance company that was filing his claim was like, "Okay, you say you have a working Orpheus Disc Piano and fully-functioning Regina Music Boxes and Roller Barrel Organs.  What we're gonna need you to do is record someone playing these things so we can validate your claim."

Unfortunately due to abysmal admission sales to his terrifying collection of horrors, the old man is practically broke, and so the only way to record these instruments was to hire out his mentally-challenged nephew, who inexplicably owns his only bottom-tier sound booth that he co-operates alongside his pet chimpanzee.  The whole recording booth smells like mothballs and monkey shit, but. . . you know. . . . you get what you pay for.

VERDICT:  3/10 - Seriously? (This train wreck of an album gets a couple pity points because it's so disorganized and random that it's almost amusing.  Almost.)

- SHELVED -

- Brian