(courtesy YouTube)
I am, for all my love of upsetting apple carts and pushing envelopes, especially creatively, quite traditional when it comes to Christmas music.
That’s not to say that this reviewer wants choral extravaganzas or hymn-drenched carols, though they can be delightful in a sparing context; no, traditional in the Christmas music sense is a warm and cosy (yes, even in hot and sunny Australia) big band sound that feels like an idealised 1950s take on the season.
Yes, yes, we know Christmas was never as carefree as the ideal but that’s hardly the point is it?
We want to feel as if Christmas is all the good and delightful things that inhabit movies and books and streaming and TV specials, and so, if it takes a particular style of music to conjure that up, then where’s the harm in indulging in all things retro?
But as Ben Folds’ first-ever Christmas album, Sleigher (a, the festive puns! Gotta love ’em) underscores beautifully, sometimes pushing that festive envelope can be a wholly fulfilling and originality sustaining joy.
Much (but not completely) like Sia who, with Everyday is Christmas, tossed out the classics in favour of a compellingly playful album of her own compositions, Folds has gone largely with his own songs while retaining some standards that he covers in his own inimitable style.
Here he explains why:
Christmas is constant. Allowing you to take stock of what’s different, to understand who you are and all the ways you’ve grown and changed. There’s something about Christmas that really pushes you to ask, “Who am I now? How did I get here?” You can look back on Christmases from your childhood and see the progression, or you can zoom out and look back at Christmas songs from the ‘30s and ‘40s and ‘50s and see we’ve evolved socially and culturally. Having that consistent framework is really illuminating. I love those holiday classics that are totally broad and timeless, but I’ve only ever been able to be myself, and I realized the most generous thing I could do with this album was write the best songs I could, no matter where that took me. Anything else just wouldn’t ring true. (Stereogum)
There’s a quietly whimsicality that pervades much of the album, with a real Peanuts special vibe infusing tracks like “Little Drummer Bolero”, “Sleepwalking Through Christmas”, a Folds-ian track that is honest about how the season can be for many of us where we’re not fully present in the festive moment, and “Me and Maurice” which is a reflective look at taking his god, who’s really called Maurice, out for walks during a period in Nashville where he lives where snow had shut down everything.
The three songs are part of the more ruminative start to the album that gradually picks up as Sleigher gets going with “The Christmas Song” (Mel Tormé, Robert Wells), one of the three standards Folds covers along with “The Bell That Wouldn’t Jingle” (Burt Bacharach, Larry Kusik) and “You Don’t Have to Be a Santa Clause” (Seger Ellis), not exactly getting jaunty so much as it lifts the more reflective mood of the album.
Folds has the most fun with original song “Xmas Aye Aye”, which is playfully electronic, all beats and fun and which samples to great effect, “The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” from The Nutcracker while rather mischievously using AI to write all the lyrics.
As a step away from the rest of the album it’s genius, and it’s segue into the Seger Ellis track actually works surprisingly effectively, closing out an album that rather delightfully stares down all the musical traditions of Christmas and does its own thing to very merry effect.
So, will I play Sleigher when I’m decorating the tree or cooking up some festive treats? Unlikely, but if I want to step away from the usual festive everyday and give my soul a shot of seasonal difference then this is the album for it, a lovely mix of idiosyncratic music choices that does a beautiful job of rewardingly slowing things at a time of the year when we need it the most..
Read an interview with Folds about the making of the album.