1) Field Music - Home for Christmas; 2) Haley - Like Ice and Cold; 3) Warm Digits - Good Enough for You This Christmas; 4) Rachael Dadd - We Build Our Houses Well (with Rozi Plain and Kate Stables); 5) Stats - Christmas Without You; 6) The Phoenix Foundation - Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas; 7) Francis Lung - To Make Angels in Snow; 8) Jesca Hoop - White Winter Hymnal; 9) The Go! Team - Look Outside (A New Year's Coming); 10) The Cornshed Sisters - Have a Good Christmas Time
Sentimental, feel-good indie Christmas music - for once!
Key tracks: "Good Enough for You This Christmas", "Look Outside (A New Year's Coming)", "Have a Good Christmas Time"
As someone who loves both Christmas and "indie" music, I've listened to my fair share of seasonal non-mainstream releases over the course of my time on this earth (and certainly since they became bizarrely popular in a post-Sufjan landscape) and let me tell you what - it's not easy to find one that sounds like we're celebrating one of the best times of the year. Many artists in the indie spectrum specialise in melancholy or straight-up depressed Christmas music - sometimes with a wink and tongue lodged firmly in cheek as they knowingly cater to the sad banger crowd, sometimes genuinely wanting to dig into that hidden sadness that surprisingly many ye olde Christmas classics carry under their winter coats. That kind of soft melancholy can be oddly cosy, suitable for those quiet evenings when you reminisce on Christmases past or you're winding down from the current one. But downbeat is downbeat, no matter how much tinsel you put on top of it - as evidenced by the many snide questions I've had about why I'm listening to such depressing music at Christmas.
Lost Christmas was born from sad events - the UK label Memphis Industries had to cancel their annual Christmas event due to COVID, and instead in its place the label decided to issue a compilation of new and borrowed material from willing acts in their roster. Despite the less than optimal change of plans and the title, Lost Christmas has turned out to be one of the rare Christmas albums of its ilk that genuinely sound like they welcome the season. It's happy. It has the kind of warmth that comes from genuine excitement for the season, wrapped with a bow of bittersweet but comforting nostalgia and coated with the tinsel of adulthood reality in comfortable measures. Even when the lyrics aren't necessarily excited about the Big Day, they still glow with a careful positivity: "Good Enough for You This Christmas" only hopes that whatever can be done do on the day is something special after the trials of 2020 ("it won't be perfect - it's still worth it!"), while "Look Outside (A New Year's Coming)" skips Santa entirely and raises its view towards the next year and better times in the horizon. That optimism is really resonant.
There are a few lesser songs in Lost Chrismas' short but sweet half-hour-ish run time - The Phoenix Foundation's twee robot take on "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" is probably the least essential inclusion but it raises a little smile nonetheless, and Jesca Hoop joining the push on making "White Winter Hymnal" a seasonal classic doesn't quite do it for me - and to be honest, I blame a lot of that on hearing British TV personality Alexander Armstrong covering it for his Christmas album and instantly gentrifying the song as a result. But even with Hoop's song, the sneaky interpolation of "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" it secretly contains within is masterfully done and lifts the song up. Both turn out to be minor imperfections on what is otherwise a real treats selection. Some acts bat for team sentimental (Haley and their gentle acoustic landscape, the magic winter wonderland of Rachael Dadd) and others for holiday cheer (Field Music's Christmas musical opener, Stats' karaoke funk, the carefully romantic Francis Lung), and what they share between one another is a lot of heart and plenty of hooks. Memphis Industries' roster is full of quirky but delightful indie pop, and the acts selected here represent that really well
The undisputed high points here are the aforementioned and gloriously swooning "Good Enough for You This Christmas" by Warm Digits and The Go! Team's very Go! Team-esque "Look Outside (A New Year's Coming"), both of which have already become Flintcore holiday staples. They're stunningly perfect pop songs that adorn themselves in big melodies and a larger-than-life pop bombast and, they carry a kind of earnestness in term that really makes a great Christmas song; no empty clichés, but an appreciation for the feeling of the season, whatever exactly that is for each person. The Cornshed Sisters close the selection beautifully with another now-favourite: "Have a Good Christmas Time" is a cosy dressing gown, cup of warm glögi in hand and an idyllic fireplace crackling in the background, bidding Christmas evening to a good night with a gently-sung lullaby. It's wonderfully feel-good and like comfort food, and appeals to my soppy yuletide heart. The quiet Christmas greetings at the end are the only time Lost Christmas succumbs into real cheese, and honestly - it's perfect and I'll allow it.
That slightly cheesy happiness, the cosiness - it all hits the spot because (and obvious thing is obvious) I am a Christmas romantic: I've had the pleasure and privilege of having grown in a household where Christmas was considered a special time full of traditions and family closeness, and that's carried over to my own adult days. While I love my weird and wallowing holiday hits, I didn't realise how large of a gap there was in my collection in terms of music that actually reflects my own feelings towards Christmas in tune and tone, even if not always in lyric. Lost Christmas has filled that gap by surprise and it's now an essential holiday listen for me - and with the added bonus of it being one I can actually put on in the background without raising too many eyebrows from others. It came in the wake of a rough year for many, and it was made to lift people's spirits again when many of us were denied from spending the season the way we wanted to. In December 2021 - the time of writing this - we're still facing some of those trials and tribulations, but Lost Christmas is still here to glow up the room with cheer for all for at least its precious 34 minutes, still bright.
Rating: 8/10
Physical corner: none, no CD release exists which is a crime and I will probably pester the label yearly about it until they cave in just to appease my inane obsession. You've been warned.
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