After all the tragedy of the past few months, the Christmas spirit seems more elusive than ever to summon up in our broken isles. The malls may resound with Christmas ditties all targeted to get us prospective shoppers in the mood, but given everything going on they sound hollow and otiose, even as they echo throughout, bouncing off shop windows and shiny floors.
But music remains a mysterious force, capable of expressing both the need to acknowledge the frailty of our lives and the desire for communion with a force greater than us. It can make us nostalgic about the past, more comfortable with the present and less fearful of the future. Let us not forget, during a season such as this — even with vulgarity on full display — there is still much to cherish, even if it’s something as simple as a song.
•Give Love on Christmas Day
The Jackson 5
“The Jackson 5 Christmas Albumâ€
James Brown also released a Christmas album and so have a slew of other Motown artists, but it’s this one by their juniors (often referred to as a mere novelty act at the time) that has endured. Of course, it’s Michael Jackson but it’s not his achievement nor his brothers alone — the production team behind it dubbed The Corporation deserves recognition for turning what was potentially a throwaway album of covers (note the generic title of the LP) into the yuletide staple it has become. Give Love on Christmas Day is so uplifting and earnest that you can’t help but nod in agreement with its message, which the lead singer’s intervening years of excess and lunacy have not been able to refute, even by his own example.
•Christmas Time is Here
Vince Guaraldi Trio
“A Charlie Brown Christmasâ€
This would be included if only for pure nostalgia, but the fact that it has become as endearing as it has cannot be solely attributed to the famous cartoon by Charles Schulz. It also hasn’t transcended its source, for it perfectly captures what attracted you to the characters of Charlie Brown and Snoopy in the first place: that, apart from all the rambunctious goings-on of childhood, there is a place for melancholy in the innocent heart. (For further evidence, one needs only to look at the Tumblr site This Charming Charlie, which mashes up Morrissey’s lyrics and Peanuts strips in perfect and often startling sync.) Christmas Time is Here perfectly evokes that emotion, that autumnal angst in anticipation of a coming winter, expected to be biting and lasting.
•Christmas (Baby, please come home)
Phil Spector with Various Artists
“A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spectorâ€
Grandiose and ebullient, much like the personality of its creator, this LP still sounds big today. Much has been written about how Phil Spector achieved his effects, his so-called Wall of Sound, but no one technical detail can ever really account for the vibrant majesty that the record producer and his performers achieve on this album. It’s not all sound and fury signifying nothing but rather, it pulses with genuine warmth and bonhomie in every detail. And in no track is this more apparent than in Darlene Love’s Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home) in all its aching and lovelorn glory. George Michael tried to borrow it, Bono also tried to recapture it, but none beats the bombast of the original.
•Sana
Wuds
“Oplan Kahonâ€
Although this compilation of their past releases on Tommy Tanchanco’s Twisted Red Cross label (albeit all rerecorded properly this time in a studio) wasn’t ever meant to be a Christmas album, a case can be made for it … at the very least, in essence. (Even the sound of the music alone — sprightly, spiky and all raw riffage — wouldn’t be too out of place alongside other punk acts doing straight covers of holiday classics.) The concerns of lead singer Bobby Balingit have always been far less about destroying institutions than transcending them, after all. And he has always espoused a certain kind of spirituality in his tirades, allowing him to adopt a positive attitude rather than a negative one. Not that he can’t be scathing, too. The guiding mantra of Sana urges one to keep one’s gaze at what we don’t want to even see. “Sana hindi minsan ko lang itong tingnan…†sings Balingit in the refrain. It’s the perfect sentiment to keep in our hearts this time of year, even as we celebrate our blessings when so many have none to really count.
•Prelude of Light
John Zorn
“The Gnostic Interludesâ€
It would have been easy to just have suggested John Zorn’s “A Dreamers Christmas,†which features covers of old favorites Winter Wonderland, The Christmas Song (featuring none other than Mr. Bungle/ Faith No More singer Mike Patton on vocals) and even Christmas Time is Here (see above), as well as two original compositions by Zorn. In fact, it is perfect in many regards as a modern Christmas classic: the eccentric composer shows enough reverence for the original recordings while distinguishing them with his characteristic idiosyncratic but empathetic arrangements. But it is this more recent work — which isn’t a holiday-themed outing at all — that manages to touch more deeply upon the inherent mysticism of the season. (It is the advent of the Lord, after all.) Compositions such as Prelude of Light do sound like miracles unfolding in sound, or of evoking the presence of the sacred in our midst — a deeply felt hymn that would resound in a cathedral as it would in a manger.