The School

A Christmas Gift For You – Elefant Records ace new festive album

The number one Christmas single! Once the preserve of Noddy, Roy and Shane and now a toss up between some TV karaoke dork and a Facebook inspired campaign to revive the career of an old metal band.

This is a terrible shame as the playlist below highlights quite how many great Christmas records there have been.

Adding to that list are some of the tracks from the new A Christmas Gift For You – Elefant Records’ compilation of yuletide goodies. What is great about this album is that it the label’s artists are all delivering brand new Christmas tunes. There’s no ironic covers of Mistletoe and Wine here!

In case the Spanish record label has passed you by, they combine both English and Spanish speaking band all of whom probably share a passion for Saint Etienne, Phil Spector’s Christmas album and Andy Williams’s TV festive specials.

The highlight here is provided by the recently reformed 80s power pop classicists The Primitives whose You Trashed My Christmas starts off like a indie thrash before the sleigh bells and harmonies kick in and its goes all Wizard! Magical stuff. The recent Primitives album has some very wonderful tunes on it too.

The album also sees the return of the Magic Theatre, a band whose London Town album of a few years agowas a time travelling affair in which a guy from the 60s ends up romancing a girl from the 1880s, all set to gorgeous strings and poppy melodies. Christmas Lights sounds like a refugee from that album with its gentle vocals, subtle strings and hummable chorus.

Other highlights include the Phil Spector-ish I Just Wanna Hold Your Hand On Christmas Day by The Yearning which sounds not unlike this magical mob and X-mas song by Edine Avec Mitnik Et Son Orchestre – which is a lovely duet sung in English.

Time for the Egg Nog Latte now…