The Great Christmas Record Odyssey, Ep. XCIX

Welcome back to the Holliest, Jolliest, Musically-Snobbiest corner of Cyberspace. . .

Album Title:  A Christmas Album: New Songs for an Old Celebration

Album Artist:  Connie Kaldor

Whatever I thought I was going to end up with when purchasing this record a month ago. . . dear Christ, I was wrong.  

Without a doubt, today's LP was purchased solely because of the album cover art, which - while disgusting to look at - provides us with zero clues as to what the actual record is going to sound like.  There's no one famous listed anywhere on the album cover, just a 'Connie Kaldor' (as if any of us know who the hell that is.)  There's a date (Nov. 4, 186) and a radio station scrawled across the top of the album in ugly, green marker; WGNC-FM, which, when I looked up it up on the ol' Internet, is a Christian radio station broadcasting from Constantine, Michigan.

I have no idea where that is.

Who decorates a tree like this. . .

Anyway, the album cover is as random and ugly as the tracks of this LP, folks.  The first song on Side A - 'Last Month of the Year' sounds like a slave spiritual song that had been passed down through the generations until it ended up in some evangelical church somewhere in the Deep South, where the Whites got a hold of it and made it their own.  This is out of place enough, but then 'Island Santa' starts and suddenly we're listening to a poppy, 80's calypso number that reminds one of the music you'd expect to hear playing behind the intro credits of a 1980s comedy that takes place on a beach somewhere in the Caribbean.  It's a poorly-contrived impression of Jimmy Buffet's take on Christmas music, and - like every other artist who tries to rip off Buffet - it falls flat on its face.

As the album plays on, I find myself becoming more and more annoyed with Connie's delivery.  She can carry notes (a little), but her voice never sounds authentic.  It's like she couldn't decide what kind of album she should cut with this LP, so she just waltzed into her local recording studio and said 'screw it, we're doing everything.'

Connie changes her singing styles as often as the tracks on this album change genres, and it's. . . really annoying.  'Mincemeat Tart' and 'Christmas Time (Gonna Be Home)' (who the f*** decided a song with a title like this warranted placement on a frickin' Christmas album) sounds like she's trying too hard to hard to be the love child of Melissa Ethridge and George Thorogood, with an imitation raspy, whiskey-burnt throat.  With  'Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,' in contrast, she sounds like the best singer in the choir of your Contemporary Service at your local church (you know, the service that starts at 11:15am, so you can sleep in a little, but it's not as quality as the 9am Traditional Service.)

And on the 'country' numbers like 'If We Make It to December' or  'Cowboy Christmas'?  Don't jump to conclusions now and assume she's trying to do her shitty impressions of Dolly, Tammy, or Loretta.  Nope.  On these ones she sounds more like when Barney (yes, the purple dinosaur) and his gaggle of underage hangers-on visit a farm and they bring out some shitty 'farmhand' to show the kids what life on the farm is like, and then they of course break out in song.

It's that shitty.

One final note on this one, folks.  There are 'musicians' listed here on the back of the album cover, but most of the music on this record could just as well be a pre-recorded backing track (because most of the 'instruments' sound like it's a loop on some 'state of the art' 1980s Casio keyboard.)  There's some guitar work here and there, but this is probably performed by the same earring-ed, pony-tailed guy that owns the recording studio.  He's probably part of the recording package she purchased.

So yeah.  This one was really, really weird, guys.

VERDICT:  4/10 - Borophyll (A Canadian grifter from the 1980s throws just about everything at the wall to see what sticks, and ends up giving us one of the most inconsistent and comically bad Christmas albums of the season.  It's actually just like the ugly Christmas tree from the album cover, but in song form.)

- SHELVED-

- Brian