Bloody hell it's 2018

Heeeeeeelo, you remember when I told you I was getting married two years ago..... No..... oh..... well I did tell you, you can check if you want. Well that wedding was just over a month ago and the honeymoon I've just got back from. Basically what I'm trying to say is, sorry I'm late.

With all that out of the way lets have a first peek at what Christmas 2018 is offering. In our usual fashion you won't get a large selection of tracks from us. If you need to know the latest thing might we suggest you visit the awesome Christmas Underground  (@xmasunderground on that twitter thing) or the legendary Stubby's House of Christmas both will give you more Christmas tunes than you could possibly listen to, nothing gets past them we can't recommend them highly enough. No what we'll give you is a few select tracks the finest Indie and Alternative Christmas songs and maybe point you towards unofficial releases like videos of live covers and radio specials. Of course come the start of December we'll also release our famous Christmas playlist for 2018.

So considering how late we are it must have been a slightly slow start to the Christmas season because there's only a few releases to report on but they are real quality.

First up, Shame have been getting all sorts of hype around the UK the past couple of years. When they finally released there debut album at the start of the year it didn't seem to make the impression that many expected. I for one was a little unimpressed. This however is a decent jangly guitar romp through the Spanish language Christmas classic. Get it now at Bandcamp below.



The Grinch is getting another big screen outing this Christmas. It's one of my least favourite Dr Seuss stories. Strange for a Christmas music blogger but there you go. Fortunately the soundtrack is strong with classics interspersed with new tracks... well as new as Tyler the Creator giving You're a mean one Mr Grinch a full facelift. I first came across Tyler the Creator via Frank Ocean's early work with him in the Odd Future collective. He's had to reign in the darkest of his inclinations from that period but Tyler's delivery is a good fit for the Grinch here. I'm sharing with you the other of his offerings from the Soundtrack simply entitled 'I am the Grinch'. This one gives Tyler a little more room the make his grumpy grinchy points over traditional Christmas sounds all layered with laid back beats.


Finally for this post what would Christmas be without Sufjan. He literally must be on two thirds of my Christmas Playlists. Well this year there is a story to go with a new Sufjan Track. Over ten years ago Stevens ran a songwriting competition the winner of which traded rights to their song for the rights to a new Sufjan Christmas song. Alec Duffy won that competition and he's guarded the prize  song only allowing it out for listening parties he held across the US. Duffy is now the Artistic Director of the non-profit Brooklyn performance venue JACK. This year to raise funds for the he's releasing the song along with his winning song and a Doveman remix of Sufjans effort. The original is classic Sufjan the remix lifts it nicely and it's the rework that's our favourite.  The whole collection is available now at Bandcamp with our favourite track below.



Ok so that's the start, I'll post more when I've found more worth posting. If you spot anything you think I've missed or just wanna say hello then pop by @xmassongblog or message us at xmassongblog@outlook.com.