![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Listen here.
I thought we'd kick off with a song about the True Meaning of Christmas. It comes late on Thea Gilmore's unconventional but excellent holiday album Strange Communion, which I discovered around this time last year. There, it acts as a shock to the system, a soft-spoken and lethal counterpoint to the eight songs that precede it. I think it works equally well as an opener, although I must admit that it is currently more than a week to Christmas.
I actually came across Thea Gilmore thanks to an inaccuracy on an iTunes Canada staff playlist, of which more later. I'm glad I did. As you can tell from this, she's a terrific lyricist. I personally am delighted by any lyrics that include the words "gimcracks", "Gordian knot", "equipoise", and "Saturnalia". According to this article in The Mag, the lyrics reference Louis MacNeice, with whose poetry I'm not familiar; if anyone knows the reference, please speak up!
The opening reminds me a little of A Child's Christmas in Wales, which is something of a holiday tradition around these parts. (We'll be having readings from it at my choir's concert.)
In future installments I'll be including videos if I can find them; in this case there doesn't seem to be one. Get on that, somebody.
Get the full musical Advent calendar here. | What is this?
Happy December! It snowed here yesterday, although I don't believe it stayed on the ground anywhere.
I thought we'd kick off with a song about the True Meaning of Christmas. It comes late on Thea Gilmore's unconventional but excellent holiday album Strange Communion, which I discovered around this time last year. There, it acts as a shock to the system, a soft-spoken and lethal counterpoint to the eight songs that precede it. I think it works equally well as an opener, although I must admit that it is currently more than a week to Christmas.
I actually came across Thea Gilmore thanks to an inaccuracy on an iTunes Canada staff playlist, of which more later. I'm glad I did. As you can tell from this, she's a terrific lyricist. I personally am delighted by any lyrics that include the words "gimcracks", "Gordian knot", "equipoise", and "Saturnalia". According to this article in The Mag, the lyrics reference Louis MacNeice, with whose poetry I'm not familiar; if anyone knows the reference, please speak up!
The opening reminds me a little of A Child's Christmas in Wales, which is something of a holiday tradition around these parts. (We'll be having readings from it at my choir's concert.)
In future installments I'll be including videos if I can find them; in this case there doesn't seem to be one. Get on that, somebody.
Get the full musical Advent calendar here. | What is this?
Happy December! It snowed here yesterday, although I don't believe it stayed on the ground anywhere.
