While the impending tax season has kept me by and large away from my regular blogging post, it hasn’t stopped me from induldging in a little Christmas spirit. Indulging in music, that is, not egg nog and chestnuts and cookies with little sprinkles, except I wouldn’t necessarily refuse any of those if offered. Well, I might refuse the chestnuts.
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I’ve said in the past that my favorite album to listen to during the end of the year was Christmas Day in the Morning by the Revels, a folksy performing-arts troupe from New England. Christmas Day in the Morning couldn’t have a more fittingly-titled artisted to compose the record: the cuts are mostly composed of cheery and boistrous revelry, including choirs of children, men and women, panpipes and fiddles and small brass ensembles to exhalt traditional Christmas tunes, enthusiast calls for evening wassails and holiday feasts, and traditional English cold-weather folk-spun yarns about characters who chop wood and dance jigs in the firelight and so on. Good hearty stuff for the season.
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The only drawback about the Christmas Day album is the sorry occasional inclusion of Mannheim Steamroller-style synth accompianment to the otherwise warm instruments and vocals. Despite Mannheim Steamroller’s annual fame during the Christmas season, due to their array of holiday-themed albums, that bleepy signature 80’s-brand synth in every friggin’ song drives me nuts. Chestnuts, maybe. Keep it cozy, kill the keyboard.
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This year I decided to branch out from the Revels a bit into more contemporary productions. The two Christmas-celebrating artists I picked up, Sufjan Stevens and Trans-Siberian Orchestra, the former an indie-weirdo folk-rock artist and the latter a pomp metal band, are similiar only in that they attempt to grab ahold of some of the holiday cheer through their creations.
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Both are very different from the Revels, which is a success in its own, seeing as how I wanted something different this year. But after listening to the respective works, I have to say that I only really like one of them, and that one I like, I really like.
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And the other? Don’t like it at all.
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Now that I’ve got a little anticipation mounted with the previous two statements, I’d like to dissipate it quickly with an additional statement.
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Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s Christmas albums are
awful. Mystery over! Clarification follows.
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I thought
Trans-Siberian Orchestra would be a perfect match into my listening for Christmas. Being a big power metal fan, I’d much like to meet a band that has its roots in power metal-ish composition, and
Trans-Siberian Orchestra fits that bill, right down to the three-album concept and thick story that includes reocurring themes, motifs, characters a’ plenty, ladies and gents with soaring, angelic vocals, full orchestral and choral cuts…and, of course, keyboarding and distorted guitar riffs a-plenty.
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I even like the potential for the concepts, which are range from small vignettes about various people on Christmas Eve to popular ideals about the season. Heck, you want to talk about potential, check out the main character: God’s youngest angel, who is sent down to Earth from Heaven to find one great goodness in man, or something similarly prententious.
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All that is fine and well. Many power metals albums I’ve listened to include similar amounts of composition overload, and are plenty successful as individual compositions.
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Trans-Siberian Orchestra tries to do the same thing your usual power metal album does, but it’s missing one very large thing — well, maybe two: genuine inspiration, and perhaps, if you want to get pretentious, a soul.
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Listening to any of the tracks from the two albums I bought,
The Lost Christmas Eve and
Christmas Eve and Other Stories, rare is the spark among the tracks, the that signals a signficant composition. The pop favorite
Wizards of Winter from Lost Christmas Eve (made most popular a couple of years ago by
this crazy happy lights show) is one such track, with good hooks, well-distributed instrumentals, and a careful but constant acceleration to the tune’s climatic finish. It feels wintery (or wintery enough), mostly thanks to the jingle bells and a couple of quoted Christmas carols.
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A second rare memorable track is An Angel Came Down from Christmas Eve and Other Stories, a simple but solid ballad that smartly lets the narration take the front of the mix, and excluding any attempts of showboating in the other instruments.
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But that’s it. A Mad Russian’s Christmas,
TSO’s take on Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies, is exactly as you might imagine a Christmas song done with a metal mentality: the string section takes a back seat, and is are replaced by a screamy guitars full of effects; the piano and keys trade solos with the axes every couple of minutes; lots of changes in dynamics, orchestra hits, and so on. Boring.
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Same goes for the absurdly-named Christmas Eve: Sarajevo 12-24, which somehow melds Sarajevo with the traditional Carol of the Bells. Again, zero surprises, zero soul: guitar plays the melody, orchestra backs ‘em up. Licks, slides, and a couple of quotes. No surprises, no sensuality. So who cares?
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The actual concept and lyrics are just as bad. Get this part in the narration that precedes a song called “The Wisdom of Snow,” a title worthy of a sad chuckle itself.
And as the snow comes gently down<br/>
Its soul intent to reach the ground<br/>
To cover scars the world still feels<br/>
Perhaps to give them time to heal
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For as men invest in money<br/>
And professors in what they know<br/>
God invests in mercy<br/>
Like winter invests in snow
If a black metal band got ahold of that first stanza, the song would conclude with the sun coming out and burning away all the snow, opening fresh the scars that were set to heal by a meager bit of snow. Bow out before the giant burning ball of gas in the sky, humans!
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Look, I don’t really mind lyrics that much, a side-effect of listening to too much power metal. But this business about God
investing in mercy and winter
investing in snow is one, an awkward juxtaposition, even besides the complete lack of romance in the word
invests; and two, it’s just completely absent in terms of interesting illustration. I would almost bet a pound of pfeffernusse that the lyricist just cranked these stanzas out, one by one, grabbing any words that roughly intersected the realms of narrative sense and rhyme. The method is just as inspired as the result.
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Here’s another bit of poetry from the song Christmas Nights in Blue.
Just another night in New York City<br/>
Snow comes down, looks real pretty<br/>
Don’t know how but suddenly there you are<br/>
With Jelly Roll Morton playin’ for the bar
Not much of an explication, is it? But you gotta love that snow!
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There’s little doubt that the creators of
TSO tried really,
really hard to make something loving and lovable out of the holiday spirit. They plugged everything about the season into the albums: toys, giving, strangers in the night, reconciling old ills in the name of good spirits, angels, GOD HIMSELF, cookies, ales, strange and familiar climate conditions, and so on.
If you want a comprehensive reference for the contemporary commerical Christmas holidays,
TSO’s Christmas concept trilogy has your interests covered.
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But if you want interesting, well-composed, inspired music that captures the soul of the season, look elsewhere.
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Elsewhere like Sufjan Stevens’ just-released
Songs for Christmas (of course). More on the great Steven’s latest composition later — within a week, hopefully, depending on the ole’ work schedule.
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In the meantime, enjoy Jolly Old Hawk, a short song from the Christmas Day in the Morning album.
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