Sufjan Stevens - 'Christmas Songbook' (Rough Trade) Re-Released 10/12/07

Sufjan Stevens' 'Songs for Christmas’ whisks the listener away on a fantasy reindeer-tugged sleigh ride across the tundra, where the curmudgeon’s heart is thawed, where Slade is slayed, and the sleigh bells ring from merry-on-high.

Last year, ’06 , saw the release of the 5 disc box set originally recorded for friends and family as pressies over some 6 years, each EP being recorded on a different year with 2004 skipped due to the demands of recording ‘Illinois’. Santa Sufjan plundered the abysmal canon of erstwhile Christian carols and Yuletide hymns for thee and thine, and decorates the 5 EP’s with the tinsel and baubles of his own songbook - acoustic endearments purposely written as a hasty, off-the-cuff exercise, with Christmas themed songs addressing the Famile Dysfunctionale, Santa’s impending visitations, supernatural, cosmic happenings and the birth of the Baby Jesus in a manger, Mother Mary, superstitious beliefs, and the tat of Christmas ephemera, along with that creepy Christmas feeling. Recordings take place at his own home, and Sufjan writes how he invited friends to record and “Deck the halls with boughs of holly! Electing collaborators and scapegoats, I arrive on people’s doorsteps, microphone and stand in hand, “Here! Sing! Chorus! Verse! Repeat! Now have some eggnog!”.

With all the generosity of the portly-red-robed-chimney-plunger his-elf, the box set consists of 5 Volumes, entitled, ‘Noel’, ‘Hark!’, ‘Ding! Dong!’, ‘Joy’, and ‘Peace!’, with a stocking load of illustrative booty for good children in the guise of cartoons, stickers, and Christmas tales. With a fireside cosiness and all the dreamy wonder not experienced since Sing with Bing!, it’s move over Nobby Holder as Santa Sufjan spreads the love with his banjo, glockenspiel, recorders, oboe, and mincey-pie songs, tral la la la lar, la lar la lar!
 
‘Noel’ takes in a woozy ‘Silent Night’ with the melancholic, woodsy, banjo-led, 15thC, Sufjan fave processional, ‘O Come O Come Emmanuel’ finding the first of its’ three features throughout the box, as the home-baked goodness of the farmyard hokey ‘We’re Goin’ To The Country!’ and the daft ‘It’s Christmas! Let’s Be Glad!’ bring the Baby Jesus and Christmas cheer, with “…since it’s Christmas, let’s be glad/ even if the year’s been bad/ there are presents to be had…”, whilst the 15thC German carol ‘Lo, How A Rose E’er Blooming’ and the wretch-saving John Newton spiritual ‘Amazing Grace’ find the Christmas-themed brandy butter dolloped in abundance.
 
‘Hark!’ has Santa Sufjan’s simply told ‘Only At Christmas Time’, as ‘Put The Lights On The Tree’ noodles with its’ wacky, keyboard tomfoolery amidst glock, oboe, and yuletide sing-alongs - “Put the lights on the tree/ put them on the tree. Put them on the tree!...”, whilst ‘Come Thou Fount Of Every Blessing’ delights like a Cat Stevens hymn with nuance of Grace, Transcendence and the Divine within the Christian themes of Salvation, echoed on the Sally Army sound-alike brass of ‘Once In Royal David’s City’ and the bells and glock instrumental of Mendelssohn’s ‘Hark The Herald Angels Sing!’. ‘I Saw Three Ships’ positively rattles and hums with wake-the-kids-Santa’s-been-joys, and the spectral ‘What Child Is This Anyway!’ comes across as a Christmas alt-rock classic.