Artist: Frightened Rabbit
Title: It's Christmas So We'll Stop 2008
Label: FatCat
Genre: Indie
Bitrate: 177kbit av.
Time: 00:05:13
Size: 6.97 mb
Rip Date: 2008-12-02
Str Date: 2008-12-15
1. It's Christmas So We'll Stop 2008 5:13
Release Notes:
15th December sees the release of a Frightened Rabbit
Christmas single for the second year running. Whilst the same
song appeared on 7" exactly a year ago, it is re-issued here
in a radically re-mixed version - trimmed down and
instrumentally re-scored and expanded - including the addition
of sweeping strings, flutes, brass, Rhodes piano and a full
choir - by fellow FatCat artist, David Karsten Daniels.
Simultaneously rousing and uplifting whilst informed by a
brutal sense of realism, 'It's Christmas So We'll Stop' is a
brilliant xmas song in the bleak vein of The Pogues 'Fairytale
of New York'.
Enhanced by its stunning reconstruction, 'It's Christmas So
We'll Stop' remains a glorious, festive slice of kitchen-sink
realism; a candid breath of fresh air amongst the glut of
commercial excess, knowing and somehow celebrative despite
itself. As chief Rabbit Scott Hutchison expands: 'It's
Christmas' is about people deciding to be pleasant to one
another for about a day, regardless of whether or not they
actually get along the rest of the year. There's the same
fallout after christmas as perhaps a night out where you end
up in someone else's bed - the next day, after the drink has
worn off and the warm lights are turned off, everything's just
as shit as it was the day before and that feeling of comfort
disappears. I feel like i have a similar relationship with
christmas as i do with booze. Each make me feel nice in a
fairly false way, and they are really the only two things i
actually spend money on, aside from food. It's also about that
total indulgence period, which always comes with the promise
that you'll eat less, drink less and spend less really, really
soon... always tomorrow. I feel it's maybe healthier to live a
little more consistently (not that i do), but often humans
need excuses to be nice and giving and loving to one another,
and Christmas is one of those times, for better or worse'.
This is borne out in lyrics such as ⌠let the rot stop just for
one day÷, or the hammered-home pay-off, 'the next day life
went back to it's bad self'.
Oregon-based David Karsten Daniels (whose gorgeous 'Fear Of
Flying' album was released on FatCat in April this year)
speaks about the track, and how he approached the project as a
re-fit:
⌠On first listen, I had trouble hearing what could be done to
make it any better - 'It's Christmas So We'll Stop' is such a
simple, lovely little song and I was fond of the mix and
arrangement as it already existed. So when the tracks finally
arrived in the mail I put them into the computer and got the
mix going as close as possible to the original. With a very
light touch I began to add little things: a solo cello part to
join the viola that was already there, a regal trumpet part
and small group of trombones, the high strings that you hear
towards the end.
"Once the band and label heard what I'd done, they asked for
even more of it and gave me full license to really run with
the song and make it something new. As my father is a church
choir director, one can imagine I've sat through many a
Christmas concert. John Rutter, Ralph Van Williams - all the
old Christmas sacred music heavyweights (most of them English)
kept coming into my head. Along those lines, harp was added as
were winds (flute, bassoon, oboe) and a Rhodes piano (played
in the upper register so as to sound like a celeste)."
The result is a stunning new version that lusciously optimises
and expands the old, increasing the dynamics and the pull
between light and shade, building incrementally and extracting
the absolute essence of the tune. The B-side of the vinyl
release features an etching drawn by Scott Hutchison, whose
distinctive graphic style has graced all the band's records to
date.