The Nite Songs Singles Bar - December 2020 Part 4, Xmas Special!

A cold night on the roof of the Nite Songs Singles Bar. After a heavy shift sorting out two lots of singles and a consignment of EP's and mini-albums, your friendly reviewer was about to close the bar up for the night when he was distracted by the sound of sleigh bells on the roof. Climbing up through the skylight, he sees...

ANDY: Santa?

SANTA: Ho ho ho. That's right.

A: Hold on a sec, what are you doing here? I've just finished my reviews for the month and was about to clock out...

S: Have you forgotten what time of year it is, yer daft bugger?

A: Oh...yeah. That.

S: And you know what that means, right?

A; Ah. Yes.

S: Indeed. :throws a group of Christmas singles at your friendly reviewer: You'd better get these listened to then hadn't yer?

A: You mean PART FOUR of this month's Singles Bar? Oh for... (interrupted by the sound of the sleigh taking off and heading back towards the North Pole) 

Starting off with that staple of festive listening, the big Christmas ballad, Ryan Hamilton & Emily Capell's Christmas Wish (🌕🌕🌕🌕🌑) is a big soppy piano number which at almost any other time of the year I'd dismiss as sub-Barry Manilow schmaltz but maybe it's just it being the festive season but you'd have to be pretty Scrooge-ish not to find something nice and heartwarming about it. However, the B-side To Heck With Old Santa Claus provides a bit of shade to the light with more of Hamilton's trademark mischief and is a good song in its own right. Bandcamp link here.

Rich Ragany & The Digressions are also striking while the festive iron is hot and December In My Heart (🌕🌕🌕🌕🌑) is a proper old-skool Christmas ditty recalling Slade and Wizzard with its glam/rock 'n' roll stylings, heartfelt lyrics and chorus the size of Everest. Rags seems to be one of those songwriters who can make nearly anything he touches turn to gold and the boy done good again here. Bandcamp link here.

Veteran of the punk and post-punk scene Spizzenergi has also chipped in on the festive singles market with the downbeat acoustic Christmas In Denmark Street (🌕🌕🌕🌕🌗). An ode to the pre-gentrified area around Charing Cross Road where punks and rockers would all meet to go to the 12 Bar, the Crobar, the Intrepid Fox and the Astoria to drink our cares away before the yuppie scum moved in and gentrified the area (yeah, thanks for that Boris Johnson you c**t) with none other than Tony Visconti on production duties, it's a genuinely heartfelt song and deserves to give Spizz a festive hit - get on it and download pronto folks.

As well as the Ryan Hamilton single, Wicked Cool appear to have a fair few acts on their roster putting singles out for the festive season. Philadelphia rockers Soraia have come up with Santa Claus (🌕🌕🌕🌗🌚) which is oddly reminiscent of the Runaways covering Santa Baby and giving it a riffed-up makeover. Not bad at all.

Also on the Wicked Cool rosters, Los Angelenos Prima Donna's Gimme Christmas (🌕🌕🌕🌕🌑) comes on like some righteous cross between T-Rex and David Johansen's post-New York Dolls solo run with its swaggering attitude, plinky piano and driving drumbeat. Great fun and...well, given that most of the best Christmas classics came from '70s glam rock bands, this was always likely to be a winner. The more rockabilly/doo-wop Mistletoe Blues on the B-side shows another side to their repertoire and makes this a good little pressie for the retro-rocker in your life.

There's always going to be a few cover versions around at this time of year - case in point being the Conte Brothers (you may know guitarist Steve Conte from Michael Monroe's band and before that the 21st century version of the New York Dolls) and their cover of the Kinks' Father Christmas (🌕🌕🌕🌗🌑) which is a relatively faithful cover of the old standard and zips by satisfyingly. Not bad at all - Bandcamp link here.

Also on the cover version front, it's good to see left wing folkie type Grace Petrie back with some new material for the first time in way too long with a cover of Fairytale of New York (🌕🌕🌕🌕🌑). It'd be pretty difficult to screw up a song as great as this and Petrie and her backing group the Resistance Band turn in a heartfelt and endearingly rough around the edges rendition of the old Pogues classic. Bandcamp link here.

Another group who've been pretty quiet in 2020 are The Kut who I don't think I've heard anything from since their Valley of Thorns album back in the dying days of 2018. Waiting For Christmas (🌕🌕🌕🌕🌑) is certainly a curveball from these grunge-punk upstarts, a big festive piano ballad (quite similar to a more downbeat version of the Pretenders' 5000 Miles actually) which shows that they're maybe a more versatile band than they'd previously been letting on. Not bad at all. Bandcamp link here.

Finally, Chris Catalyst has come up with arguably the first lockdown Christmas song in We Made It To Christmas (🌕🌕🌕🌕🌑), a sweet heartfelt McCartney-style song about just being relieved that we've managed to survive the shitshow of 2020 and sparing a thought for all those who are suffering. It shows off Catalyst's ability as a songwriter and is backed by acoustic renditions of Merry Xmas Everybody and Silent Night. And even better, it's available as a free download from the official Chris Catalyst website.

And thus the longest Singles Bar column in Nite Songs history (okay I know we’ve only been going six months or so but I really don’t see this record being broken for a very long time!) finally comes to a close and we can all head off home for some much needed rest. Have a suitably awesome Christmas and New Year you lot and we’ll see you in 2021.