Singer, violinist, songwriter, Texas native and Grammy Award winner Amanda Shires presented her first Christmas album to the public in November 2021. The record is interesting primarily for its original material, and the fact that its sense of celebration, while others are too cloying and incredibly positive, is mixed with emotions such as sadness, resentment, disappointment. There may be family drama, feigned joy, depression, and a desire to escape from a winter holiday somewhere far away on a tropical island. A harsh reality is taking place next to flying deer, sparkles and angels with harps.
As shown in many Christmas movies, at first you feel joy that the whole family will gather at your parents’ house for a holiday, but soon you realize that it might not have been a good idea to gather everyone here in one room. Miss Shires is a diligent student of John Prine, who also follows the songwriting tradition of Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan.
Amanda’s unique voice with its distinctive vibrato is catchy; sometimes it seems like he’s about to break down on high notes, and this helps the ambiguous perception of her music. And here we hardly hear her violin, it’s a piano album, Americana mixed with intelligent pop music. As Amanda herself says, she always wanted to record Christmas songs that would reflect all her mixed feelings about this holiday: from sweet nostalgia to bitter life experiences.
The album was recorded at the Sound Emporium Studio in Nashville over four hot July days. The producer was Lawrence Rothman. To create a Christmas atmosphere, the studio was decorated with garlands, the musicians put on New Year’s hats and put on elf ears. There are 9 original songs and 2 covers in total. The recording featured: bassist Jimbo Hart, a member of Jason Izbell‘s 400 Unit, Amanda’s wife; jazz pianist Peter Levine, whom Amanda met during a tour with The Gregg Allman Band, perhaps he is the founding musician on the album; guitarist Pat Buchanan, who worked with Dolly Parton and The Chicks, as well as drummer Fred Eltringham (Sheryl Crow, Lucinda Williams). The Black gospel quartet The McCrary Sisters is present on several songs, adding color and authenticity to the sound.
The Magic Oooooh opener is an upbeat ballad about Christmas in June and the simple desire to hold a loved one’s hand and have it last for 400 years.
A Real Tree This Year is a song about a real Christmas tree, kind of life-affirming, but with some kind of inescapable sadness. It’s as if the girl bought it to please herself, but she lives alone and will spend Christmas alone with this two-meter-tall beauty. A green fragrant tree is much better than its plastic counterparts, but sometimes such joys make you want to cry.
This year Let’s Get Away offers an escape from Christmas with its unreasonable spending, snow, noise, noise, pervasive light, glitter and fuss. Anywhere, preferably to any of the seas. Home To Me is a sad ballad about that desirable man who might not come to you. Ice on the roads, planes in the ice, and it looks like ice in this man.
Blame It on the Mistletoe is a beautiful love story that happened right on December 25th, the album’s most successful pop hit. Maybe it’s all about chemistry, maybe it just so happened that two lonelies met, but Christmas went very well. Slow Falling Snow is a song about a broken heart and devastation under the softly falling snow outside the kitchen window, where the voice is ready to break into a scream or get wet with tears.
What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve? the only Christmas jazz standard here, written by Frank Loesser in 1947. Instead of the soothing carols of Silent Night, we hear something resembling a Bach fugue with a classical minor key, just as solemnly gloomy and plunging into the abyss of thought.
The blues-rock roll Gone For Christmas with a walking guitar riff about a big wish list, with funny blues euphemisms “I want a plane with two pilots: to hang off with one and fly with the other.” Wish For You is about that reckless love when your innermost desire for yourself is only to make all your best wishes come true for him. Melodically, it’s like the Beatles’ Let It Be.
Always Christmas Around Here paints an unsightly family portrait the morning after a festive night. The sofa is filled with wine, and the bread in the oven is burnt. But maybe in the new year everything will change and we will be able to win this lottery?
“I want this music to help people understand that they have the right to feel anything – it’s okay to feel bad when everyone around them is just celebrating. And at the same time, I wanted to record new Christmas songs, not the ones that everyone has already heard 200,000 times, and I hope they will be sung.”
– says Amanda Shires. “Have yourself an angry little Christmas” is how one of the listeners commented on the album. Well, we do have an ambiguous but compelling job. This sugar and pepper is different from most Christmas collections and deserves high praise.
