it's christmas time, bitches!

so, i have a new grain of sand to add to the beach of shameful pop culture admissions i've made on this blog throughout the years.  every year i listen to a shitload of new christmas albums in the hope of finding sparkles of brilliance.  sure, christmas is a huge, mean, nasty, soulless commercial enterprise, but we all have those warm, fuzzy moments of one christmas or another, either as a child or an adult, or else we wouldn't spend years and money and travel thousands of miles at the most dangerous travelling time of the year every year in hopes of resurrecting those warm, fuzzy moments.  right?  RIGHT?!

well, most of my warm, fuzzy moments involve christmas music, whether it was the listening to, or the caroling of.  and even in the 21st century, sometimes hundreds of years after many of these songs were made, occasionally a version of an old song or even more rarely a completely new christmas song ("all i want for christmas is you", anyone?) comes along that is actually worth listening to.  besides, i need something to prop up the leaning tower of my sanity come the end of fall semester each year, and what better way than to listen to a shitload of relaxing christmas music?

so this year, i've listened once again to a decent amount (yes, including bob dylan's christmas album, but i'm not ready emotionally to talk about that yet).  not as much as i usually do, but that's okay because early in my survey, i've discovered what is undoubtedly 2009's christmas music masterpiece.

even better, you can download it for free.

this.  is.  so.  awesome.

sure, it's christmas tunes rendered as if through a midi synthesizer or an old NES sound chip, but there are tons of brilliant little moments in here that deserve discovery.  this wasn't just thrown together as a sheer gimmick; each song shows a lot of interesting touches and more brilliant little details come out with each listen.  check out "god rest ye merry gentlemen" if nothing else.  it's ridiculously cool (note for young people: the voice isn't auto-tuned, now get off my lawn!).

also, there's a great, moody version of "greensleeves", which is my favorite christmas song.  so that doesn't hurt.