For fans of smart, hooky
pop who imagine the Carolinas to be the musical center of the universe,
the Chris Stamey Group's 1986
holiday EP
Christmas Time was a truly happening yuletide gift from the former leader of
the dB's, and in 1993 the disc was reissued on CD in expanded form, with the track count jumping from seven to 16 tunes. In 2006,
Collectors Choice Music has given this album its third incarnation as
Christmas Time Again, with three songs dropped from the 1993 version and eight more added, equaling 21 seasonal tunes from various
pop-meisters for the delectation of aging hipsters everywhere. The tunes comfortably move back and forth between the clever and the sentimental, with
"You're What I Want for Christmas," "Sha La La," and
"Holiday Spirit" (the latter featuring an enthusiastic chorus of "Gimme gimme gimme!") sounding like manna from heaven for
power pop fans as
Alex Chilton's version of
"The Christmas Song" and
Don Dixon's soulful take on
"I Saw Three Ships" find an ideal middle ground between the
traditional and the modern. A number of newer tracks have been added for this edition, including
Marshall Crenshaw's great and bluesy
"(It's Going to Be A) Lonely Christmas," an alternate version of
Whiskeytown's
"Houses on the Hill" (which barely has anything to do with Christmas, but sounds fine in this context), a new
dB's cut called
"Home for the Holidays," and another great song from
Dixon,
"Christmas Is Saturday." While the
ambient and meandering
"It's a Wonderful Life" and
"Snow Is Falling" close out
Christmas Time Again on a less than impressive note, most of this album is good and spirited fun, and who knew
the dB's could record a version of
"Feliz Navidad" that would rival the seemingly definitive interpretation by
El Vez? Good Christmas fun for the
new wave guy or gal in your life. ~ Mark Deming
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