Forty Minutes For Christmas Eve

I haven't really felt much Christmas joy so far this year and all of a sudden it's Christmas Eve and I need to try to get into the spirit a little. Therefore, today's Sunday mix is a Christmas special, a little under forty minutes of Yuletide tunes to sing around the Christmas tree. Admittedly The Jesus And Mary Chain aren't particularly full of Christmas cheer but a little noise and self- loathing is all part of the season isn't it? 

The picture, 'cos I know you're asking, is from a nativity scene that gets erected every Christmas about half a mile up the road from here. It's full of the Joyeux Noël spirit and is a feast for the eyes. 

Forty Minutes For Christmas Eve

• Durutti Column: One Christmas Your Thoughts
• The Sugarcubes: Birthday (Christmas Eve)
• Basement 5: Last White Christmas
• The Vendetta Suite: Christmas In Cologne
• Low: Just Like Christmas
• Johnny Marr: Free Christmas
• Sonic Boom: I Wish It Was Like Christmas Every Day (A Little Bit Deeper)
• The Fall: Xmas With Simon
• Saint Etienne: Her Winter Coat

One Christmas For Your Thoughts was originally released as part of a 1981 compilation, Chantons Noel, on Crepescule along with other festive tunes by artists including Aztec Camera, Paul Haig, Simon Topping, and Cabaret Voltaire. It then became an extra track on the various CD re- issues of LC, the 1981 Durutti Column classic- LC stands for Lotta Continua, the struggle continues. This is a particularly lovely piece of Vini Reilly guitar playing and let's face it, there's never a bad time to listen to Vini.

Basement 5's Last White Christmas came out in December 1980, dub/ punk produced by Martin Hannett. Post- punk dread as standard.  

Birthday was a single by The Sugarcubes, their breakthrough record. In 1988 Jim and William Reid remixed it three times, each one with a Christmas title- Eve, Day and Present. Scuzzy Christmas sounds. Side A of the 12" is double grooved so when putting the needle on the record it was always a lottery as to which version you'd get. 

Christmas In Cologne is on The Vendetta Suite's December 2019 EP The Wheel Turns, a festive krautrock treat from Belfast's Gary Irwin, Christmas a la La Dusseldorf.

Just Like Christmas has become one of the few seasonal songs I'll actively seek out around Christmas, the  Minnesotan three piece releasing it as part of an eight song Christmas album in 1999. Sleighbells, Velvets drums and sweetly sung lyrics about driving from Stockholm to Oslo, it starting to snow and it feeling like Christmas. 

Johnny Marr's Free Christmas was given away free from Johnny's website back in 2011. Chiming guitars, acoustic guitars, baritone guitars and some choral voices with Mr Marr wishing listeners a happy Christmas. 

Sonic Boom's 2020 Christmas song was a reworking of another of his songs from the All Things Being Equal album and has Galaxie 500/ Luna's Dean and Britta helping out on vocals. Christmas as repetitive, trippy drones and a song specifically for a Christmas we all spent in Covid enforced isolation. 

Xmas With Simon was the B-side to 1990's High Tension Line single. The Simon in question is Simon Wolstencroft, ex- Fall drummer who I bumped into at the Unknown Territories gig last weekend. Shame I didn't have the presence of mind to get a photo with him. The caption would have written itself. 

Saint Etienne's Her Winter Coat was a December 2021 single, a rather beautiful Pete Wiggs song and production, a wintry blur of synths, sleighbells with the distinct air of melancholy. Just like Christmas. 

All My Chords Were Minor Chords

I've been enjoying Dean Wareham's singles, three of them, leading up to the release of his second solo album a couple of weeks ago, the snappily titled I Have Nothing To Say To The Mayor Of LA. Last year Dean and Britta put out a beautiful cover of Neon Lights, one of the standouts from their Quarantine Tapes (recordings the couple made from their home during lockdown). Galaxie 500 and Luna are never that far away from me so an album of Dean Wareham solo songs has come at exactly the right time. This song, Cashing In, is a wry, self deprecating and at times very funny take on where Dean sits in the musical landscape. 'I'm not selling out, I'm cashing in' he sings. In a lot of ways there's nothing here Dean hasn't been doing for over thirty years but he's carved out a space for himself and that's what he does. There's some Michael Rother style guitar leading the way on Cashing In among the familiar nods to Jonathan Richman and The Velvet Underground.

Back in 1989 Galaxie 500's second album, On Fire, was a minor sensation- reverb drenched, hushed, shimmering indie guitar pop that hooked me early on and has never let go. Their cover of New Order's Ceremony is legendary and has been posted here before. Previously, in 1988, there was a single called Tugboat. Tugboat is a gorgeous, frazzled, small hours love song (and tribute to Sterling Morrison who quit The Velvet Underground in 1971 to captain tugboats in Houston). 

Tugboat

Monday Mix

This is an hour's worth of songs and sounds I put together a week ago, got distracted from and went back to yesterday. I'm not sure it's quite right but I'm not unpicking the whole thing now so it's here for what looks like a wet and rainy Monday in August. Find it at Mixcloud. 

I did think about dropping found sounds from the BBC sound archive all the way though it- a future project perhaps. I'm not sure the Scritti Politti song works where it is either but there's some nice ambient sounds from Sebidus (The Orb's Alex Paterson and Andy Falconer), some Balearic loveliness from Coyote, solo Strummer, Will Sergeant and Les Pattinson as Poltergeist, Dean and Britta doing Kraftwerk, Sonic Boom droning out Sinner DC, some spaced out sounds from Oregon's Lore City, William Orbit at chill level 10 and Mono Life's stunner of a remix of Pearl's Cab Ride from a few years ago. 

• BBC Sound Archive: Market Sounds
• BBC Sound Archive: Clock
• Sedibus: Afterlife Aftershave (edit)
• Coyote: Café Con Leche
• Joe Strummer: Mango Street
• Poltergeist: The Book Of Pleasures
• Dean and Britta: Neon Lights (Baxter Street Bounce Mix)
• Sinner DC: The Horizon (Sonic Boom No Drums Version)
• Lore City: And Tomorrow
• Scritti Politti: Dr Abernathy
• William Orbit: The Story Of Light
• Pearl’s Cab Ride: Sunrise (Mono Life Extended Trip)

This City's Made Of Lights

Way back in 1989 Galaxie 500's album On Fire caused a bit of a sensation- the shimmering guitars, mid tempo metronomic drums and Dean Wareham's falsetto vocals spread over two sides of vinyl housed inside an orange sleeve all came together to make a very immersive, self contained record. When the Blue Thunder EP came out in 1990 they included their cover of New Order's Ceremony, pretty much the best cover of a New Order song in existence.  

Dean went on to form Luna with Britta Phillips, and also record and release as Dean and Britta. Last year they covered Neon Lights, a homage to Florian Schneider who died in April last year. The cover is a sparkling, shimmering piece of music, a dreamy indie cover of Dusseldorf's finest men- machines.

Neon Lights

Take Me Somewhere

Sonic Boom has a Christmas song out now, roping in Dean and Britta (from Galaxie 500 and Luna) for some vocal harmonies. It's a blissed out ode to finding some warmth in the middle of this winter. 'Take me somewhere' Pete sings, 'a lil' bit deeper', as the synths wash, the loops loop and the drum machine whirrs. Peace on earth and goodwill to all. Available at Bandcamp at a name- your- price deal with all the proceeds going to EarthIsland.

 

It's going to be a funny old Christmas for many of us but everyone seems to be determined to make the best of it and rightly so. Happy Christmas to you all, look after yourselves and each other.