The Great Christmas Record Odyssey, Ep. CXXIX

Hope you guys weren't looking forward to hearing instruments this evening . .

Album Title:  Christmas Hymns and Carols, Volume 1

Album Artist:  The Robert Shaw Chorale

So here's another prime example of Yours Truly picking up an album out of Radio Wasteland's Dollar Bin solely due to the shitty album cover.

An assortment of orphans singing for table scraps, out in the cold, while the warmth of a festive Christmas party (one can only assume) can be seen shining through a nearby window. One of the kids is holding a battered, old book far too thick to be a Hymnal of Christmas carols, and even if it was he apparently doesn't need to read it while singing. Being an orphan, he probably can't read anyway. Two of these kids are so hungry they can't even keep their eyes open, they probably don't live through the night.

Great album cover, guys.

This is an old record. You can tell because the mixing on this album is pure dog shit. The audio levels are all far too quiet and the surface noise is atrocious, even after a thorough cleaning on my Spin Clean. 'High Fidelity' my ass.

The choir itself is fine for what it is. It sounds like a church choir, like what you'd see in a large, more upscale church. Like a Catholic Church. Where there's high vaulted ceilings and a crap-ton of candles standing about. Depressing statues posed in nearby wall niches, rich mahogany pews, giant stained-glass windows, a bunch of pervy, bald men having 'mischievous secrets' with unsuspecting children in hidden anterooms.

Not like one of those 1970s brick-and linoleum congregational churches with faded carpet and shitty coffee that looks like a doctor's office and smells of old people and dust.

There's not much to comment on this one, I apologize - this is gonna be a quick and easy review. Each of these tracks consists of a medley of standard, religious (and, if not religious, at least somber) carols that blend together well and, for the most part, are all familiar to the casual Christmas music listener. This helps because if they included 'original' Holiday songs, this album would be really, really weird. What kinda stuffy church would have the audacity to have their choir sing original numbers during the Christmas season?

No surprises here, all safe choices.

I can't think of a pressing need for an album such as this. If you're relaxing at home, listening to Christmas music, would you really want to be listening to a choir album? I mean, really? This is an a capella choir album, too - there's zero music in the background anywhere. Just a bunch of people, standing around a collection of microphones, singing church songs. If that's your idea of a good time, by all means, you do you - you might thoroughly enjoy this album.

But I sure as shit don't wanna hang out with you.

VERDICT:  5/10 - Meh (As far as a capella Christmas choir albums go, I guess. . . . it's. . . okay?)

- SHELVED-

- Brian

The Great Christmas Record Odyssey, Ep. LXXIX

Good God, here we go again. . . 

Album Title:  The Brightest Stars of Christmas

Album Artist:  Various Artists

Guys, I'm really conflicted about this one.  Head's all over the place.

Merry Christmas from the Donner Family

So, starting off with the album cover, we have some obvious 1960s watercolor painting of what, I assume, are seven shacks on the side of a wintry mountain, all buried in snow.  If this were a photograph of a real place, the inhabitants would slowly succumb to hypothermia and people wouldn't find their frozen corpses until Spring.  Who thought that this artwork would make a great album cover for a Holiday compilation? 

The good folks at J.C. Penney, that's who.  

(Remember J.C. Penney?  It was like Kohls, but shittier.)

Anyway, artwork aside, this is your usual roster of snooze-fest go-to's that we've seen pop up time and time again in this Christmas Record Odyssey of ours:  Ed Ames, Perry Como, Arthur Fiedler, Henry Mancini,, Robert Shaw Chorale, etc. etc.  Even before I dropped the needle on this one, I had a hunch that we'd be somewhere in the '3' or '4' neck of the woods.  The opening song on Side 1 wasn't anything to raise my hopes, either - an orchestral show-opener that's loud, overly-celebratory, and everything you'd come to expect from Eugene Ormandy.

Not like any of us know who the hell that guy even is.

Things slowly start to improve, however.  Elvis - the white-washed King of Rock and Roll - shows up with his famous 'Here Comes Santa Claus.'  If you like Elvis, you'll like this.  If you don't like him, you won't.  There's nothing surprising here with this song, it seriously sounds like every other upbeat Elvis song you've ever heard.  Ever.

Track 3 on Side 1, "Wonder Winterland" features a hillbilly banjo out of left field (by way of Tijuana.)  Steel guitars and a hard ride cymbal drive this Dixieland, brass-heavy rager into something that seriously had me come back into the Study from the kitchen and say out loud, "Are you frickin' kiddin' me?"  This track is awesome.

Following this, it segues right into Perry Como's "Home for the Holidays."  While I've never once said out loud "I love Perry Como" - because then I'd be a Comosexual - this is a Holiday staple, and one that currently sits on more than one of my Holiday playlists.

Sadly, this short run of 'not bad' patters out, and we're left with Christmas songs as lifeless as the frozen bodies left trapped on the side of the mountain in the picture above (thanks again, J.C. Penney.)  Harpsichords and a church choir - everyone's favorite combination - close out Side 1 in a yawnfest medley.  The same bizarre, overly-orchestral version of 'Jingle Bells' that Julie Andrews was forced to work with on our previous episode is featured as the opener of Side 2.  Ed Ames gets your grandmother's juices going, but certainly doesn't do it for anyone else.  Charley Pride's country number is as out of place on this compilation as a black singer would have been in 1970s country music.

. . . . hey, wait a sec.

Arthur Fiedler - the Fiedster - then makes a valiant attempt to bring Side Two back to life with his famous rendition of 'Sleigh Ride,' accompanied by the Boston Pops (like Perry Como's song on this release, a Holiday standard that's featured on one or two of my playlists), but it's just. . .  not enough.

VERDICT:  5/10 - Meh (Rising from the ashes of J.C. Penney's grandma slacks and tacky bed comforters comes this random compilation of Holiday usual-ness.  A hidden gem, a couple tried-and-trues, and a whole lotta boring.)

- SHELVED -

- Brian