At this time of year I feel kinda duty bound to uphold the seasonal theme of Christmas songs, but decent ones that remain underplayed and under appreciated are as thin on the ground as a field full of living turkeys two days before Santa arrives. Who needs the anxiety of trying to appear switched-on and smart-arsed enough in a barely-read blog post when there are floors still to wash, shops still to tackle and dining tables still to be extended?
Me, clearly.
Phoebe Bridgers has made it tradition since 2017 to release a cover of a Winter/Christmas-themed song in the run up to the big day. Released primarily for charitable causes, Bridgers does a neat line in shining a light on – yeah! – the underplayed and under appreciated songs that celebrate Christmas time (or the holiday season, as she more likely calls it.) Now, what I know about Phoebe Bridgers wouldn’t fit on the back of a £1.65 first class Christmas stamp (One pound sixty five!) but I do know that she is a member of Boygenius who played a terrific Beatles-inspired set on prime time US telly a year or so ago. I also know that she’s collaborated with artists as disparate as Taylor Swift and Ryan Adams. And I do know too that she has a voice that can melt even the coldest of hearts in wintertime; honeyed, pure, American. I should really investigate more.
Phoebe Bridgers – Christmas Song
Bridgers’ Christmas 2018’s offering was this really great take on Christmas Song by McCarthy Trenching (a band from Omaha, not an implausibly named FBI agent who doubles as a front porch strummer from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia). I know even less about McCarthy Trenching than I do about Phoebe Bridgers, but I do know Christmas Song is a cracking wee country heartbreaker, jerky and waltztime, with bar room piano and brushed snare, delicate female backing vocals and an undertow of regret running through it like an electric current. “It’s Christmas, and no-one can fix it,” goes the singer at the end as you sigh into your coffee. It’s a million miles (and several gazillion sales) from Slade and Wizzard…and all the better for it.
Bridgers adds steel drums – or a guitar that sounds like steel drums – to her version; gentle and pulsing and ringing, like a perfect Hollywood snowfall; subtly Christmassy, y’know? Her voice is tender and whispered in the verses, the way the world sounds when snow is falling outside and there’s no one in the street to spoil it. It’s skyscrapingly melodic and rich in the chorus, where she’s joined by a duetting Jackson Browne. Timpanis creep in, aided and abetted by gentle strings, almost apologetic sleigh bells and something approaching a multistacked choir, yet it never goes full blown Christmas. Like the original, it’s all the better for it. If you’re new to this song, I think you’ll like it.
Christmas bonus:
If you’ve never seen it, that Boygenius Saturday Night Live/Beatles-inspired performance is here:
Plain Or Pan 