Let�s be honest with ourselves here: how many of us can actually stand listening to holiday music from Black Friday to Christmas Day? The same five songs are belted by the church choir Sunday after Sunday. The same five songs are played on the radio over and over.
If we buy a Christmas CD�which never happens because we�re sick of the songs by Dec. 1�we get the same collaboration of remade classics by bands who insist on sounding just like Bing Crosby. Or a few bands try to create their own classics; failing, of course, because no one cares about their �Grown-up Christmas List.� (So that was a cheap shot.) As a result, listeners are left with the uncontrollable urge to turn off the Christmas music altogether and resort back to the Coldplay or the Paramore or whatever indie-rock band is cool this week.
But Dustin Kensrue, the lead singer of the alternative rock band Thrice, recently released a Christmas album that neither bores the listener or tempts him or her to secularize the holiday (at least not its music). �This Good Night is Still Everywhere� makes up for the past decade�s clich� and fruitless Christmas albums.
Though Kensrue does sing a few well-known Christmas songs, every track is uniquely his. That gruff, folksy voice of his shifts midnight Mass liturgy into a campfire sing-a-long. Kensrue�s version of �O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,� performed solely with an acoustic guitar, shies away from the typical monk-chanting most musicians replicate. Its earthy style does not create the ambiance of a cathedral, but of a gathering of close friends or the solace of drinking chai solo by the Christmas tree.
Likewise, Kensrue�s versions of �O Holy Night,� �Hark! The Herald Angels Sing� and �God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen� do not sound like something Josh Groban would sing, but much more like something on the soundtrack to �Little Miss Sunshine� � only Christmas-themed and jollier. No syllables drawn out, no words skewed by excess vibrato.
�Fairytale of New York,� a remake of Anglo-Irish folk band The Pogues� chart-topping song, proves that even a California native like Kensrue knows what it�s like to slur drunken carols in the Big Apple. Or at least, he can sing about it.
Though most of his songs are lighthearted, the �reason for the season� is not absent from Kensrue�s CD. The final song on the album, �This is War,� one of the two originals by Kensrue, illustrates Jesus� birth as an offensive battle tactic:
This is war and born tonight,
The Word as flesh, the Lord of Light,
The Son of God, the low-born king;
Who demons fear, of whom angels sing.
The radio may play endless versions of �Sleigh Ride� and �The Christmas Song,� but unless the monotony seems alluring at all, it�s better to try something new�but �new� as in something original, artsy, not just a classic with an additional verse or guitar lick. Instead, escape the unexceptional redo hits and the droning of wannabe starlets with �This Good Night is Still Everywhere.�