4 out of 5

Produced by: Various

Label: My Pal God Records

Almost the only Christmas album you’ll ever need…!

Sure, traditional holiday albums are only put on around that time of year, so they just need to provide pleasant renditions of standards.  But I don’t do holidays, and I don’t buy traditional holiday albums.  So if an artist, group, or label decides to get cute and do one of these themed releases, what I hope for is something that stands on its own.  If there’s some added, appreciable kitsch with jingle bells, so be it.

The My Pal God Holiday Record 2 succeeds in satisfying my hope on several levels: not only does it offer some great tracks from a good mix of groups, it’s also amazingly sequenced to balance out moods, so it can flip between cutesy Emperor Penguin electro jamz to more wistful fare, to rock and roll, to silly, and then wrap it up with quirky masters of the twist-on-traditional instrumentals, Drums & Tuba, handling Auld Lang Syne.  For those picking and choosing their favorite acts, there’re also some nice twists and turns: Oxes go completely straight-laced and acoustic on ‘100 Handshakes With President Christmas,‘ Atombombpocketknife are almost delicate on ‘Candycane.’  Between, Neutrino gives us a brilliant funky blend of ‘Island Of Misfit Toys / Little Drummer Boy;‘ French Kicks, in their pre-let’s-sound-like-Walkmen days, rock out on Alabaster City; Pedal and Rebecca Gates offer up quieter, more reflective XMas musings on ‘On Xmas Day’ and ’12:31,’ respectfully.

Song-by-song, there are a couple of blips that prevent the disc from delivering a seamless experience: both French Kicks’ track and Del Rey’s have hard stops in the middle in order to transition to a bridge or tone changeup, and it’s rather disruptive.  And though I like the Port Vale track, it sticks out as atonal indie pop affair versus the more ‘traditional’ rock / post-rock sound favored by the majority of acts here.  But in a cooler version of the world, MPG would’ve been putting out yearly editions of this that I could’ve hyped in the record store versus whatever regurgitated offering was on repeat from the major labels.