Forty Minutes For Christmas Eve

I haven't really felt much Christmas joy so far this year and all of a sudden it's Christmas Eve and I need to try to get into the spirit a little. Therefore, today's Sunday mix is a Christmas special, a little under forty minutes of Yuletide tunes to sing around the Christmas tree. Admittedly The Jesus And Mary Chain aren't particularly full of Christmas cheer but a little noise and self- loathing is all part of the season isn't it? 

The picture, 'cos I know you're asking, is from a nativity scene that gets erected every Christmas about half a mile up the road from here. It's full of the Joyeux Noël spirit and is a feast for the eyes. 

Forty Minutes For Christmas Eve

• Durutti Column: One Christmas Your Thoughts
• The Sugarcubes: Birthday (Christmas Eve)
• Basement 5: Last White Christmas
• The Vendetta Suite: Christmas In Cologne
• Low: Just Like Christmas
• Johnny Marr: Free Christmas
• Sonic Boom: I Wish It Was Like Christmas Every Day (A Little Bit Deeper)
• The Fall: Xmas With Simon
• Saint Etienne: Her Winter Coat

One Christmas For Your Thoughts was originally released as part of a 1981 compilation, Chantons Noel, on Crepescule along with other festive tunes by artists including Aztec Camera, Paul Haig, Simon Topping, and Cabaret Voltaire. It then became an extra track on the various CD re- issues of LC, the 1981 Durutti Column classic- LC stands for Lotta Continua, the struggle continues. This is a particularly lovely piece of Vini Reilly guitar playing and let's face it, there's never a bad time to listen to Vini.

Basement 5's Last White Christmas came out in December 1980, dub/ punk produced by Martin Hannett. Post- punk dread as standard.  

Birthday was a single by The Sugarcubes, their breakthrough record. In 1988 Jim and William Reid remixed it three times, each one with a Christmas title- Eve, Day and Present. Scuzzy Christmas sounds. Side A of the 12" is double grooved so when putting the needle on the record it was always a lottery as to which version you'd get. 

Christmas In Cologne is on The Vendetta Suite's December 2019 EP The Wheel Turns, a festive krautrock treat from Belfast's Gary Irwin, Christmas a la La Dusseldorf.

Just Like Christmas has become one of the few seasonal songs I'll actively seek out around Christmas, the  Minnesotan three piece releasing it as part of an eight song Christmas album in 1999. Sleighbells, Velvets drums and sweetly sung lyrics about driving from Stockholm to Oslo, it starting to snow and it feeling like Christmas. 

Johnny Marr's Free Christmas was given away free from Johnny's website back in 2011. Chiming guitars, acoustic guitars, baritone guitars and some choral voices with Mr Marr wishing listeners a happy Christmas. 

Sonic Boom's 2020 Christmas song was a reworking of another of his songs from the All Things Being Equal album and has Galaxie 500/ Luna's Dean and Britta helping out on vocals. Christmas as repetitive, trippy drones and a song specifically for a Christmas we all spent in Covid enforced isolation. 

Xmas With Simon was the B-side to 1990's High Tension Line single. The Simon in question is Simon Wolstencroft, ex- Fall drummer who I bumped into at the Unknown Territories gig last weekend. Shame I didn't have the presence of mind to get a photo with him. The caption would have written itself. 

Saint Etienne's Her Winter Coat was a December 2021 single, a rather beautiful Pete Wiggs song and production, a wintry blur of synths, sleighbells with the distinct air of melancholy. Just like Christmas.