A Very Cherry Christmas

Neil Jones on a Pop Miwsig Christmas

As Christmas rolls in like a shimmery ghost a symbol of more spiritual times, the Pop Miwsig Disco takes some time off and allows me to speak directly of a few songs I’ve been falling in love with as the festive spell approaches. There’s something in these apparently unspiritual times about listening to a pristine Christmas track with smoke pumping out of chimneys and the warm breath of passing people visible in the wintery air, so we start very logically with Manchester’s wonderful Cherryade label’s third Christmas compilation, A Very Cherry Christmas 3, which brings sacredness and wonder to the heart by the barrow-load.

Attentive readers here will remember me harping on about Malmo’s A Smile and a Ribbon before, but ‘Heavenly Christmas’, their contribution to VCC 3 might just be their finest moment yet. As their debut The Boy I Wish I Never Met LP showed, singer Rebecca Mehlman has a talent for writing lines that stick in the head like cupid’s arrows and make you smile, usually coated in the lush lo-fi Pop of your dreams, and ‘Heavenly Christmas’ has both trademark elements, Mehlman singing of Christmas wishes with blindingly unaffected emotion as the music twinkles away with festive “ba-booms” in the background. 'Heavenly Christmas' is an old-time swinger that ebbs with a stunning sentimentality and brings a seasonal swelling of tears to the eyes. You’ve simply got to hear it.

From a Scandinavian Christmas to a London one… you can’t get too much more romantic than that, and you can’t get much more romantic than The Madrigals. Though their track on A Very Cherry Christmas 3, ‘The Only Night of the Year’, is the only thing I’ve heard from the band so far, it’s testament enough. I’ve been listening to a lot of ancient Italian music lately, Scarlatti, Vivaldi, Montiverdi of coarse (aptly, these of coarse being The Madrigals), and this track rings the same kind of bells (sorry) in modern indiepop splendour, subtly and sacredly buzzing with seasonal emotion and melody. In fact both A Smile and a Ribbon and The Madrigals in this track are bands who evoke a rare kind of lyrical sacredness within songs that stop you in your tracks and fill you with wonder, and at this time of year that’s just especially to die for.

Here’s another familiar band who have a bit of sacred Pop festivity about them... I included Silence at Sea’s magic, splendidly percussive ‘Than Her Heart Allowed’ in my Pop Miwsig October mix, and another gem from them is ‘Memorise Everything’, and not just because it seems to be a melodic Pop play on some Krishnamurti philosophy (is it not?!). For ‘Memorise Everything’ is a typically humble, lo-fi Silence at Sea wonder, trickling along with a gentle melodic profundity and that way they have of making an enchanting atmosphere with a little distortion and background innovation. ‘Memorise Everything’ had passed me by in light of the more shimmering gems on the debut Oh No Telephone EP before I caught on to the deeper fascination that lies in the lyrics, and it takes the band up another notch in the Pop hegemony in my head. Oh, and ‘DeadCowboyTown’ from their same Oh No Telephone EP, with it’s opening lines of “young lovers like gun runners”, is possibly the most beautiful thing I’ve heard all year.

Down through the gears now and a shot from art-punk hell to really stir everything up at your party. If you put this on your Christmas compilation it’ll be like a small propeller spinning in through your grandmother’s dinner. New Black Light Machine have a multi-youthful fascination, a dark minimalist sound that flickers aptly with sharp shards of light. The Light Machine’s ‘Disquise’ demo has a bit of early Idlewild about it, only dyed in the archest colour black. It’s a sound of sheer rebellion that erupts here and there in subtle magnificence, an excitingly abstruse sound for romantics, isolationists and obscurants alike, and trust me, it’ll give anyone with any kind of living punk spirit a huge shot in the arm.

While the Light Machine jump so rebelliously right into the flames, Chepstow’s Zissou are more enamoured with the high-octane sparkle Pop of Los Campesinos!, and do a pretty good job of making some themselves… Zissou's ‘My Vinyl Turntable’ demo has exactly the same guitar sound as the Campesinos!' grand Pop juggernaut ‘You! Me! Dancing!’, an electric sound of such contrary, ebullient robustness, yet it throbs in a different kind of way. More a wistful slow burner than a starrily-spinning dance monster, ‘My Vinyl Turntable’ has a quaint and beguiled lyrical edge pulsing at its heart, a sensitive Pop glory burning at its core, and a skip right at the end of its step that says the kids are inspired. Go find out.

Now having The Chiara L’s ‘Knives’ on the Christmas mix should have the same effect as putting kerosene in your grandmother’s whisky. This is one that’s got a recent release on the This is Fake DIY label, and Leeds’ L’s are a band that spout indie splendour in euphoric rays. A guitar hook resonates and repeats itself, a drumbeat takes over and adds a little more excitement, another guitar comes in over the top like the most inevitable but best thing in the world, and we have an ebulliently shimmering and shaking two minutes of wildfire glamour to knock you off your feet. The Chiara L’s are really something, drop-dead sexy Italian singer Chiara Luchinni weaving and slinging sultry lyrical lines out over an immaculately stuttering mass of guitars, and it’s like if Elio Petri and Sophia Loren had formed their own Godard / Karina partnership back in the day, quite possibly the best “official” single of the year. I’d say there isn’t much doubt.

Time to calm this euphoria again now and to do it with a bit of The Bobby McGee’s. Jimmy and El (ie. Bobby and McGee, partnership in Twee) conquered Cardiff’s Swn festival a couple of week’s ago like two troubadours from a more regal age, regaling us on stage at Tommy’s Bar before taking to the beer garden and playing for drinks. Of coarse I wish I had a version of their profane ‘99 Ways to Make My Girlfriend Cum’ to make this Christmas mix that more outlandish, but I’m going to go for ‘When Father Died, the Ferrets Licked Away the Tears’, a little ukulele vs banjo wonder from their new S’Amuser Com des Fous EP on Cherryade. I’ve said it before, The Bobby McGee’s are where musical dreams meet with decorum terrorism, a quaint colourful duo of pure outsider romance, literary grace and great gags. Watch out for a possible Pop Miwsig-assisted mini-Welsh tour at the end of January, and they too have a quite brilliant track entitled ‘Last Christmas I Gave You My Heart and the Very Next Day You Sold It on Ebay’ on the A Very Cherry Christmas 3 compilation. It’s good you know!

Off to Chicago now for a blast from an impossibly complex and fantastic set by Yea Big + Kid Static on the merited Jib Door label. You might remember Yea Big’s avant-garde Pop collage masterpiece The Wind That Blows the Robot’s Arms from 2006, and his latest set takes the pulsing, absolutely crazy musical underbelly of that and applies it to a De La Soul like, finely-tuned hip hop sound that’ll have you swinging from even higher ceilings. The eponymously-titled Yea Big + Kid Static set features song-titles like ‘We've Built A Time Machine That Runs On Beats. We Shall Only Use It For Good’, ‘Static Leads the Coup’, and my particular favourite, ‘Low Budget Battle Scene’, but for the Christmas mix (in the name of festivity!) it has to be ‘Duck Mother Fuckers’, not least because of some slinky and typically inexplicable grooves that Yea Big applies under the feet of his pal Static. I’ve said it before, the Yea Big + Kid Static sound in general falls somewhere between Static in mid-air heading for the ground, and Yea Big on the ground heading for the air, which is apt as Static in his spare time jumps off buildings, while Yea Big is a mandolin virtuoso Chicago street-performer and break-dancer. The sound is sublime.

East to Brooklyn now and The Besties’ ‘Besties Theme Song’, which is something of an oldie as it was released on the Singer EP on Skipping Stone last winter. I really fell for The Besties when they played Cardiff in August, and really there’s nothing better than when Pop bands have theme tunes, and this is one of the very best, a nugget of a beautifully poetic twee, co-singers Marisa and Kelly sharing vocal duties to spell out The Besties’ humble manifesto (“No titles, it’s too much trouble, we’ll make your heart burst like a bubble”) and referencing each band member in affectionate lines. The whole thing has a humble literary romance to die for.

Like I said, I love it when bands have a theme tune, and Lucky Lucky Pigeons' ‘Lucky Song’ from their Happy Birds Day EP on Oxford's Freedom Road Records falls into that category, reigning down Swedish Pop fun and hardcore beats with humble DIY grace as it goes. ‘Lucky Song’ is terrific in general, but like ‘Besties Theme Tune’ the self-referencing words just get me on a different level, the Pigeons laying their own ethos similar to The Besties’ throughout (“We’ll play our catchy tunes and you will dance, come-on-sing-along, listen to the funky beats of Artie, 1,2,3 / When you here us play our music you’ll remember it till the death / Birds are singing in your head, over and over again…” How perspicacious those lines are. Do they have finishing schools in Sweden?

From three teenage girls in Dalarna to a bunch lads of gifted youth in London, and a mighty noise is currently being made by Let’s Wrestle that defies and also affirms their tender years. The part that defies belief is Let’s Wrestle’s informedly laid-back air, which is a million miles from the careerist rush of The View and The Kooks, settled in a far healthier underground realm worshiping bona fide heroes like Vic Godard, Mark E Smith and Darren Hayman, and the part that affirms their tender years is everything else, including the way the band sounds like they’re having the time of their lives. ‘I Won’t Lie to You’ is available in digital format from Stolen Recordings with a series of three releases on the label, the others being another cartoonish contrary punk ballad from the ace Screaming Tea Party, and a spectral Pop nugget from Artefacts for Space Travel. Of coarse I’ve said it before, for Christmas you could do a lot worse than buy up the entire Stolen catalogue, which would also get you acquainted with other essential literary Pop wonders like Pete and the Pirates and Tap Tap, to name just two.

A cut of Welsh mountain Pop now, and Lucky Delucci, another band I included in the first ever Pop Miwsig mix back in springtime, are back with ‘Bubblegum Milkshake’, getting better and better at creating a contrary, cartoonish Pop magic. The ‘Bubblegum Milkshake’ demo is a little like the lovechild of Somerset baroque heroes Flipron and cartoon Welsh favourites Radio Luxembourg, Delucci having both the beguilingly “spooky” elements of the former and the smiling adrenalin rush appeal of the latter, squeezed of course into a heady and fantastic mix of their own. Lucky Delucci play at Cardiff’s old church The Point on December 16th, and it’ll definitely be worth popping along to see them. You won’t miss them, the singer is 7” tall, half mountain giant, half Morrissey.

Glasgow’s Gargleblast label scored top marks during the summer by releasing Life Without Buildings' immense Live at the Annandale Hotel set, and Foxface’s This is What Makes Us set is a worthy follow-up, a broad and excellent record that combines elements of Scottish folk and indie so well, its tracks ranging from orchestral, accordion and fiddle fuelled songs that have grand and poignant flavours through bluesy folk textures and more robust, rhythmic and festive efforts. ‘What Do You Believe In?’ is in a way the best of both worlds, ebbing away in a strangely enticing bluegrass style as the dual voices of Michael Angus and Jenny Bell merge in blinding harmony. Foxface supported Idlewild’s Roddy Woomble on the tour of his hugely under-rated folk album earlier this year, and it’s quite apparent why they would have appealed.

Back to London now for a set of homely yet cutting edge poetic electronica, and Sparky’s Magic Piano’s Feel The Beat And Do It Anyway! set on Melody Factory drops half way between substantial Au Revoir Simone-esque orchestral electronica and Besties affectionate keyboard twee. It’s of course a stunning place to be, and 'Something Somewhere', with it’s Eels-like playful opening orchestration, featuring kazoo and/or recorder parps, is another festive wonder worthy of anything else I’ve heard this year. There’s a certain warmth and wide-eyed lyrical aceness that runs right through Feel That Beat and Do It Anyway!, and this track has it all, an ebbing, swishing, mellifluous miracle that wraps itself around like a warm blanket. Winter has never felt so good.

Sorry but did I say twice before in this article that so and so had had “the song of the year” in my book. I hate it that I always think this way at the end of a year, what has been “the best” and such, as if the end of a year gives us reason to step outside and observe for a moment! We are so conditioned by the media and the calender! Never mind, because the fact is that every time I hear The Bossettes' ‘Coats and Hearts on Fire’ demo I think exactly this, and with so much conviction…. ‘Coats and Hearts on Fire’ builds out of beautiful handclaps and a stuttering opening two-part vocal, before singer Connie Jordan takes over singing oh so sweet melancholic loving lines into the dark, and the background violin/keyboard that colours the fist third of the song makes my skin tingle. There’s also something festive and yes, sacred, here that says I should finish my festive mix with it, and you must also hear The Bossettes' Waitresses-esque Christmas track ‘Damn Fine Sleigh Ride’, which surely is destined for A Very Cherry Christmas 4 next year? But that’s such a long time away isn’t it? Make yourself a part of The Bossettes' warm and inviting Pop world right now, check out the others here too while you’re at it, and have a very cherry Christmas!

© 2007 Neil Jones

Download the Pop Miwsig December Mix here

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