Gaspard Royant – Wishing You a Merry Christmas (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 39:14 minutes | 447 MB | Genre: Alternative, Christmas
Studio Master, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Bellevue
Scooping up tracks from Royant’s seasonal singles and marrying them to newly recorded cuts, Wishing You a Merry Christmas is cool, hip and opens with a swinging cover of “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” drawn from Phil Spector’s 1963 A Christmas Gift for You from Philles Records album. After this, the self-composed (“C’mon Baby) It’s Christmas Time!” sets the tone for a ten-tracker which swims in less-obvious waters, even when a song is over familiar.
Royant’s take on John Lennon’s “Happy Christmas (War is Over)” sticks to the template vocally but otherwise injects a gentle dose of Sigur Rós’ textural blur. Eels’ “Everything’s Gonna Be Cool This Christmas” is rendered straightforwardly, but Wham’s “Last Christmas” is given a Roy Orbison-esque makeover. The album ends with a fine, moody, Chris Isaak-indebted run through U2’s “New Year’s Day”.
Tastefulness is a rare commodity with Christmas albums, but Wishing You a Merry Christmas has it in spades. As a similarly classy but new contribution to an easily maligned genre, file it alongside Paul Revere & the Raiders’ bizarre A Christmas Present…and Past, Psychic TV’s Pagan Day, Etiquette Records’ Merry Christmas album, Les Disques Du Crépuscule’s Chantons Noël – Ghosts of Christmas Past and the Ze label’s A Christmas Record.
Tracklist:
01. Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)
02. (C’mon Baby) It’s Christmas Time!
03. Christmas Time Again
04. Christmas Is Back in Town
05. Happy Christmas (War Is Over)
06. Everything’s Gonna Be Cool This Christmas
07. White Christmas
08. I Can’t Believe It’s Christmas
09. Last Christmas
10. New Year’s Day
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