All Hail Santa!

I own more Christmas albums than I think I do. Here’s one that embraces all the misery, cold, incipient alcoholism, loneliness, a touch of religion and fleeting joy of the festive season. Welcome to The Smoke Fairies Wild Winter.

I had nothing to say on Christmas day
When you threw all your clothes in the snow
When you burnt your hair, knocked over chairs
I just tried to stay out of your way
But when you fell asleep with blood on your teeth
I got in my car and drove away 

All the fun of the fair, here.

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Released solely through the Rough Trade shop in London in 2014 in an edition of 1000, Wild Winter was then re-released the following year on white vinyl*. I bought it because one of those nice chaps from Public Service Broadcasting recommended it, the Smoke Fairies having fallen off my ‘auto-buy’ list by then, despite my love for their debut.

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Opener ‘Christmas Without A Kiss’ slinks into view, chock-full of unrequited bad impulses and unfulfilled desires. The music, restrained as it is, bristles with the restraint imposed upon it and you sense it wouldn’t take much to fracture that divinely English reserve.

Get into the festive mood
Maybe go carolling
Lips red from too much mulled wine
No church will let me in

The Captain Beefheart cover ‘Steal Softly Thru Snow’ works rather wonderfully as an off-kilter folk offering, all cartoon-like tempo jumps and odd, yet melodic notes – everything anchored nicely by the vocals.

The decidedly danceable, pulsing ‘3 Kings’ veers near to Goldfrapp turf and is all the better for it, turning it into a tale of star-gazing hope:

We're sky watchers
Starlight's buttons
Moonglow movers
Death Star shooters

‘Give And Receive’ is by far the best original song on Wild Winter, a downbeat tale of hard-won faith and belief, more spiritual than religious. It comes close to Low ‘If You Were Born Today’ as one of my very favourite weary Christmas songs. The sumptuously, defiantly miserable ‘Circles In The Snow’ is another highlight with some rather lovely low-key guitar figures.

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We’re feeling slinky and slightly kinky kooky again on ‘Bad Good’, a song in praise of our all-powerful red-clad overlord and purveyor of instant justice without any right of appeal, Santa. They believe! All hail our overlord Santa! ‘Last year I searched for evidence / But I’m still sitting on the fence’ well, maybe.

The icy minimalism of ‘Wild Winter’ is a little undone by the sweetness of the vocals, they add too much sugar. Again, there is a decidedly alluring pulse at the back of this tune. The instrumental ‘Snow Globe Blizzard’ is a real treat, some truly lovely minor chord action and beautiful folky tones going on.

Closing track ‘Nothing To Divide Us’ is fine but contains too much filigree and adornment to truly drive home its message.

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Wild Winter is a good album, a nice accompaniment to a fire and a glass of something red. There’s a newfound pulse to the bass in places here and the harmonies and playing of Blamire and Davies get better and better, but something stops Wild Winter from becoming a stone-cold classic for me. I think it is their tendency to err on the side of sweetness and reserve a touch**.

It is illustrative, I think, that by far the best track on Wild Winter is a cover, ‘So Much Wine’ by the Handsome Family. That’s not a slur on Smoke Fairies at all, I think their version is taut, heartfelt and punchy; truth be told I may even prefer it to the original. But^ there is something joyously poetic and straightforward in the lyric that is lacking elsewhere.

And there, I’ve reached the bottom of the glass.

1042 Down (the chimney).

PS: Because we all deserve it:

I had nothing to say on Christmas day
When you threw all your clothes in the snow
When you burnt your hair, knocked over chairs
I just tried to stay out of your way
But when you fell asleep with blood on your teeth
I got in my car and drove away

Listen to me, Butterfly
There's only so much wine you can drink in one life
And it will never be enough to save you from the bottom of your glass

Where the state highway starts I stopped my car
I got out and stared up at the stars
As meteors died and shot cross the sky
I thought about your sad, shining eyes
I came back for my clothes when the sun finally rose
But you were still passed out on the floor

*we stalwart first-buyers sneer at the white vinyl arrivistes.

**both of which qualities elevate certain of the songs here, maybe I’m fickle – maybe you can have too much of a good thing.

^never start a sentence with ‘But’ folks, it may actually be illegal.