Tis the season for all the holiday music to start filling the airwaves and the stores and our public spaces. It’s just possible that I’ve been known, from time to time, to refer to the onset of this event (which seems to start earlier every year) as a humbug.
Just possible.
But over recent years I’ve found myself softening on that perspective, mostly because it means that I can break out One Christmas at a Time by Jonathan Coulton and John Roderick:
Depending upon the circles in which you travel, you may not immediately know who these two gentlemen are, but you should.
Jonathan Coulton is a former computer programmer who decided to kick-start his music career by doing the Thing a Week podcast. This show was one in which he challenged himself to produce some type of audio content - usually a song - each week for a year. This led to a large standing catalog of music (much of it with a decidedly geeky bent), and since then he’s gone on to put out an album with a record label, start an annual geek-entertainment focused cruise, and take the role of House Musician on Ask Me Another.
John Roderick is the frontman and songwriter for The Long Winters, a former member of Harvey Danger, and a podcasting tour de force. He started with Roderick on the Line, which he still does with his co-host Merlin Mann, a podcast that is effectively the best conversation you’ve ever had with a good friend, over and over again. He has since added Road Work with Dan Benjamin, and two network podcasts - Omibus (which I reviewed here) and Friendly Fire, in which John and his co-hosts take apart war movie after war movie.
One Christmas at a Time is what happens when you put two ambitious, creative, out of the box thinkers together and have them make a holiday album. Note - I’m not avoiding the word "Christmas" here for politeness, but rather for accuracy. Christmas is addressed, but so are multiple other components of the holiday season. _The Week Between__, for example, targets that odd period of time after Christmas, but before New Year’s Day where our usual world is in a sort of limbo.
And there’s more - Uncle John is about Christmas, in a way, but mostly it’s about maybe not choosing to invite that one relative - the titular "Uncle John" in this case - who always ruins everything.
2600 will cause anyone of a certain age (and that age is between 45 and 50-ish) and predilection to experience waves of nostalgia. And, depending upon how those youthful Christmases went, perhaps make them a bit bitter. Again. If you are that person you’ll get the title. If you aren’t, well, find that person and ask them.
And there is more, of course. As one can probably tell from the descriptions here, many of the songs have a somewhat humerous bent to them, but this is not Christmas parody. Rather, with these songs you have the artists considering the holiday season from a different angle than we usually see in more traditional seasonal offerings. For this reason, and due also in no small part to the talent of the men on the album, it’s re-listenable in a way that a parody album could never be. It is, in fact, delightful on first, fifteenth, and fiftieth listen.
If you are looking for a bit of holiday listening that is different from the standard fare - a respite from the repetition you find on every channel and in every store - but still want to engage in the holiday spirit - One Christmas at a Time may be just the thing.
It’s available at:
- Amazon (on CD)
- Amazon Music (Streaming)
- iTunes and Apple Music