A Music Box Christmas

Merry Christmas. We’re reaching the end of the Old Lady CD posts and I’m excited to talk about my Album of the Year next week.

For the record, my favorite Christmas album is Jingle All the Way by Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, and my favorite Christmas EP is Tsundere by Gregory Pepper and his Problems. I recommend listening to both of those more than I do any of the albums on this post but I don’t own them yet so I can’t post about them.

Here’s what I thought on Christmas Eve of 2024. ‘Fuck, that’s tomorrow, isn’t it? And I still have four Christmas albums to listen to this afternoon? Damn it. Well, at least work is slow. 15 songs, 35 minutes, sounds like my kind of record!’ How wrong I was.

A Music Box Christmas is not a metaphor, meant to imply a certain toylike innocence and craftsmanship. No, it’s a disgusting e-piano playing all the classic English Christmas carols in mono. There’s a fast but subtle wobbling which sounds like they put a phaser on it, but it could very well be the cheap analog tape they recorded on too. Every track sounds like it’s coming from the toy speaker inside a Tickle-Me-Elmo. Do they still make those? This record makes my fucking skin crawl. Trying to hold my nose and ignore the awful tone, the piano playing is at least technically proficient, but the floweriness of the performance makes it worse to listen to. I particularly hate the sharp high register melodies. Oh, and since it’s all Christmas carols, the melodies themselves repeat ten times in a three minute song. Awful. Awful. Awful.

A Music Box Christmas is a bad album, and I don’t like it.