While the chestnuts roast and the eggnog chills, the Pittsburgh Symphony Brass brings us its brilliant take on classic Christmas tunes. Poised playing and warm tones make these versions of such timeless songs worth a listen. This live recording sounds like took months in the studio to perfect, thanks to the group's cohesive performance.
Rock River Music Records had the genius idea to take a bunch of old Christmas records and let modern DJs, such as Dan The Automator, remix them. Amazingly, it works. This album offers the best of both worlds; traditional pop vocalists blended with dance beats.
While indie pop darlings like the Shins get all the fame, Matt Pond PA has been turning out albums of equal quality at double the quantity (counting since 2002). Their string-led alt-rock caters to West Coasters who get nostalgic about the East Coast seasons. Or at least that's what it does for us.
Loosely speaking, French Miami is a rock band. Using rock music as a starting point, French Miami use its structures as the glue holding together more abstract musical ideas: dizzying, jagged guitar riffs anchored around pulsing synths, harmo- nized finger-tapping accenting tightly wound grooves, precise stop-start timing.
The Brooklyn wunderkind's holiday record is a great window on his unique art. Who but the man behind "Come On, Feel the Illinoise" would rework a White Stripes song title into "Get Behind Me, Santa"? As usual, Stevens' banjo-driven indie-folk is darkly funny and spiritually deep.
This indie-rock bunch returns their genre to the scrappy days of, well, 1986. And we're not talking about precious, dance-rock '86; we're talking about the '86 of a severely soused Paul Westerberg. The group's storming guitars and sneering vocals practically supply their own flannel.
"Lo-fi" music was conceived as a stripping away of studio pretense. Often, it's quite the opposite, but the original idea is intact in this Seattle duo's work. Bumbling percussion, ragged vocals and rough hooks channel both modern anti-folk and early Stones and Kinks.
Start by imagining Missy Elliott as a Cockney Brit from outer London--OK, that's a tough one. But the English need to get their hair done too (in Sovereign's case, a demi-cornrow with a dash of Sporty Spice does the trick), and as long as that's the case, this recent Jay-Z signee will keep dropping tight breakbeats about baggy trousers and shiny new trainers.
The Danish pair go a step further in their presentation of retro rock as something vicious. Surfy guitars, always packing switchblades, and dressed to kill, get matched with a sketchy programmed template. The genre's early days have been translated to its most modern.
Erran Baron Cohen, brother of Borat (Sacha Baron Cohen), has made a valiant effort to make Hanukkah a cool holiday, and he's done a great job. By combining klezmer, reggae, electronica, tango, and many other genres, Cohen reinterprets classic Jewish holiday songs as well as offering unique originals.
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