Various Artists – A Very Cherry Christmas vol. 4

I must start this review by offering up the fact that I’ve deliberately shied away from Christmas songs in recent years. After the first of these Cherryade compilations came out there seems to have been an increasing deluge of Christmas songs every year, all writing about a season I don’t much care for. So rather than a critical analysis of every track, I’ll point out the things I most like about this, because my viewpoint on the others may be somewhat jaded.
Hallelujah Carol by Fever Fever is suitably ramshackle and falling apart at the seams while Very Most’s Christmas Came November 4th is very twee, but nicely festive with bells and sweet female backing vocals The same goes for Little My’s Xmas Song, replete with recorders, bells and glockenspiels. For a change of tack Tyrannosaurus Rex For Christmas by The Lovely Eggs is a repetitious, droning nursery rhyme concerning having dinosaurs round at Christmas. Perfect Christmas Snow by The Gresham Flyers is a lovely crooned number, understated yet dramatic in a manner similar to Richard Hawley and Santa de la Crux by The Bobby McGee’s is their usual idiosyncratic self, telling odd Christmas related tales over a whimsical tune. Ste McCabe pulls Christmas apart on Christmas Time For Sanctimonious Swine while The Seven Inches’s 12 Days Of Christmas sounds like it was recorded on a drunken Christmas Day post the Queen’s speech, which is a good thing indeed. Alarm Bells by Detox Cute & The Beauty Junkies has all the beauty of a crystal clear St Etienne while Shout For Trout by the Fountain is a doomy computer game driven tune.
Which is quite a list when you look at it and it seems I have been proved wrong. Again.

A Very Cherry Christmas vol. 4 is out now on Cherryade Records