All is Calm

For the last three years Swansea Sound have released a Yuletide single, and they are at it again this year, with two new songs.  Previous seasonal offerings have manifested as CDs inside greetings cards.  But this time, the two new tracks are presented on a vinyl album along with the previous six songs, creating a perfect soundtrack for a sad and angry Christmas.

The new songs: Not My Order is about the neurosis and existential angst that are the inevitable result of hurried online shopping.  Click It And Pay (Walking In The Air), a rewritten version of a song from the band’s acclaimed ‘Twentieth Century’ album, continues the theme.  Desperate online consumer Hue Williams enjoys a duet with harassed warehouse fulfilment operative (Amelia Fletcher).  Hue orders a load of crap in a panicked frenzy, she struggles to pick the items he’s chosen and worries if she’ll be sanctioned by her managers.

Swansea Sound’s Christmas isn’t just about consumerism though.  On Happy Christmas To Me we get to share the festive joy of the billionaires who own the warehouses and the social media platforms.  On Santa Bail Me Out, we experience the optimistic dreams of someone who can’t afford to buy anything but knows a friendly load-shark in a jolly red coat.  (I Wanna Wear A) Mirrored Hat Like Slade is genuinely festive, celebrating the hit song that still provides the best soundtrack to Christmas parties five decades after it was written.  Dreamland is a tale of a trip to a really nasty Christmas theme park.  The Life We Led is a heartfelt song about doomed nostalgia and bewilderment.  The album is rounded off with a rollicking version of Cheap Trick’s Merry Christmas Darlings.  The ‘party sequence’ at the end sees the return of everyone’s favourite oligarchs, as they trade corporate mission statements over glasses of wine.

Enjoy Christmas with Swansea Sound this year!