Tain’t the Season

Something hit the site last week that makes me feel warm and cold and excited and terrible. Phil Spector’s magical, perfect A Christmas Gift For You is the archetypal po-mo holiday album; one that is both reverent to the past and interpretive in a way that blasts apart the old structure. Spector, the creator of the Wall of Sound production style and the grand old crazy man of modern popular music, was sentenced to 19 years in prison in April after a conviction on a second degree murder charge; two truly freakish trials (one mistrial, one resolution) preceded, dragging victim and former actress Lana Clarkson and, essentially, the entire California legal system through the mud. So that makes this album tough to root for, and maybe even tougher to spin around the holidays, when folks generally don’t want to think about the grisly death of an aging starlet at the hands of a gun-happy musical genius.

Aaannnyway…the album.

What a sumptuous dish this is, filling me up with nostalgia and a rarely tapped glee. Spector recruited his in-house murderer’s row of vocalists, including his then-wife Ronnie’s group, the Ronettes, who make “Frosty the Snowman” sound yearning and childlike in a way no child could, and turn “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” into a relentless churn. Darlene Love also chimes in with the swelling (aren’t they all?) original “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home),” a song that was initially a flop only to become a standard-bearer over the years. (U2 covered the song, awesomely, on the first A Very Special Christmas comp in 1987. Yeah, I have good feelings about that one, too.) The biggest stars of this set are The Crystals, whose three tracks are impervious to criticism, especially their berserk “Santa Claus is Coming To Town,” recorded double time with tommy gun drum fills for good measure. Christmas music is almost never this fast or aggressive. The group that made “Da Doo Run Run” and “He’s a Rebel” pop culture chestnuts, turn the cheery story of St. Nick’s gift-giving into a furious warning. “You better watch out! You better not cry! Santa Claus is coming to town!”

There is another grotesque but fascinating twist to this album; it was released on November 22, 1963, the same day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. So, suffice to say, it wasn’t a commercial success. Nothing was in the ensuing weeks. That it has endured and risen to cultish level of acclaim among both holiday music nerds (guilty) and music supervisors in Hollywood (hello every twee holiday movie ever!) is little surprise. It’s a gut-checker.

NOTE: Don’t miss the last track, an orchestral dash of “Silent Night,” accompanied by a thank you from Spector himself, sounding a bit bookish, and strange, but also sweet. Is this the same man who famously brandished firearms in the face of Joey Ramone and John Lennon and now sits in maximum security prison? Sadly, yes.

Download A Christmas Gift For You From Phil Spector here.