Okay, so I like Christmas music. In fact, I like it alot... If it's classic or at least arranged well. I'll never listen to Britney Spears doing "Christmas" (or any other) music... Again... Yep, I've probably heard it before if it's out there, and some things you just can't avoid. The best you can do in those situations is try and supply yourself with an arsenal of your OWN holiday earworms and tunes.
To that end, this week has brought me to one of my favorite Christmas standbys of all time: "Tuck Andress: Hymns, Carols and Songs About Snow."
Forget that the guy MUST have a third hand in order to play all of the stuff he does... On ONE guitar... Live in the studio... With NO OVERDUBS OF ANY KIND... Forget that he is a true one-man band with talent fairly dripping off his fingers...
Yeah, forget all that and just listen to these jazzy gems, instrumentals on solo guitar that coax the listener into a soulful groove, begging you to just chill... These are some of the greatest jazz arrangements I've ever heard, with pulsing, swinging rock-solid basslines rooting familiar yet fresh melodies that ring purely and with joyful clarity. This stuff makes me happy on the highest level. Tuck's renditions of "Winter Wonderland," "The Little Drummer Boy," and "Deck the Halls" are pitch-perfect and swing like crazy, while his Nashville-influenced "Jingle Bells" evokes memories of sleigh rides taken and dreamed of alike... But it's his "Ave Maria" that is the true earworm here. Building from the classical foundation, it climbs to a sublime jam that is as understated as possible, yet impossible to forget, likea gift from Andress to the listener: The feeling, long after the record is over, that even the least "musical" of us can hum, swing or even improvise with his easily rendered melodies.
See you soon! Oh, and go buy this album.
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1 comment:
I was hoping you'd have some
holiday suggestions, I'll have to check this out.
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