Want to listen to Christmas Holiday tunes that isn’t the repetitive listening of All I Want For Christmas, Last Christmas and Jingle Bells?
Toronto music label Arts & Crafts (Home to Broken Social Scene, Andy Shauf, nêhiyawak and many more) released Home For the Holidays which is a compilation of Holiday classics and original Winter / Holiday themed songs from some of the top Canadian artists across the country including: Dan Mangan, Hannah Georgas, Sloan, Said The Whale, and more.
Enjoyable tunes to get you starting this season.
About the compilation:
These songs have been curated by the team at A&C to give a new spin on what holiday music can be, whether it’s Dan Mangan’s soulful take on the classic “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas”, Hannah Georgas’ sorrowful re-work of “Let It Snow”, Busty and The Bass’ neo-soul-jazz rendition of “Auld Lang Syne”, or a fun stripped down original rock tune from Broken Social Scene/Do Make Say Think’s Charles Spearin; these songs aim to bring the warm feeling of the Holidays to you and your family during this most unusual Holiday Season.
“Home For The Holidays began to take shape during the first few weeks of the pandemic,” says Kieran Roy, President of A&C. “With touring and recording plans put on hold, we approached our artists to contribute a holiday song for the album. In most cases, these songs were recorded in the artists’ own home studios, which now seems all the more appropriate. We hope these songs and the live stream concert will allow us all to feel a bit more festive while we’re home for the holidays.”
The album opens with the “Christmas Box”, an original from Charles Spearin about “finding small sparks of love within the mundanity of the holidays,” he says. “It’s a song about getting old. It’s a song about recognizing the impermanence of all things despite the illusions of tradition.”
“Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” celebrates “the feeling of Christmas but isn’t about the Christmas story,” says Dan Mangan on his version of the holiday classic. “I love that it’s beautiful, but that it’s also kind of melancholy.”
For Hannah Georgas cover of “Let It Snow”, she wanted “to make you feel like you’re walking down a quiet wintery street in the middle of the night,” she says. “The snow is falling and the only other thing you hear is the wind. I chose this song because I liked it a lot when I was a kid and it feels classic to me. I thought it would be nice to recreate an intimate version of it on the piano.”
And rounding out the compilation is Busty and the Bass’ neo-soul rendition of Robert Burns’ poem, “Auld Lang Syne”. “Alistair (Blu) threw the song out there as an idea and everyone immediately got on board with it,” the band says. “Then came the challenge of taking this poem from the 1700s and putting a Busty twist on it which is essentially what made the project exciting for the group. Due to Covid, we couldn’t all be together to craft this. Instead we passed around the audio, starting with simply a set of chords and some implied harmony, and one person at a time layered their instrument onto the others to build what you hear here.”
Home for the Holidays gets:
/10.
