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In This Issue

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As the Needle Spins Avoiding its anti-dogma roots, The Golden Compass veers off-course

Editor's Note

Love-Hate Mail

Rush to the Rescue Limbaugh praises Thompson, but can anything save his campaign?

Words of the Week

Monied Protest Lee Beaman finances ‘Bredesen’s Bunker’ opposition

Short Takes This week in local theaters

Suspect Behavior

 

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by Jewly Hight

Regardless of the intent, this 11-song offering is rich in two things that are not found on many holiday albums: nuance and variety. The song choices mostly stick to thoroughly familiar territory, with “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” “White Christmas,” “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” and “Silent Night.” But there are a few fresher selections here too, like “Still, Still, Still” and a trio of originals: Erika Chambers’ lilting, Celtic-tinged “Song of Mary,” Brooke Waggoner’s picturesque voice-and-piano pairing “Christmas Moon” and Aron Wright’s “Christmas Ain’t Christmas This Year” (not to be confused with the similarly titled “Christmas Ain’t Christmas” done by the O’Jays and SWV).

What adds color to Holiday Noise are the artists’ interpretations. This isn’t just an exercise in getting out a songbook of carols and playing it like it is on the page. There are some adventurous readings here, and those are among the album’s best moments. In the hands of David Spencer—former member of North Carolina duo Spencer Acuff who now has one solo album, Love Like a Symphony, under his belt—the minor-keyed Christmas hymn “O Come All Ye Faithful” becomes a shifting vocal tapestry, threaded with a dark, cascading choral melody that becomes a distinctive signature.

There’s also a fair bit of variation among the performers’ voices and stylistic approaches, though it all keeps with a generally warm and comfortable ethos. On “I’ll Be Home For Christmas,” Stephen Gordon slips from one note to the next with suavely crooned vibrato; Waggoner’s voice is slight and silvery and her backing vocals have an eerie, hummingbird-like thrum; Wright’s reedy singing sounds plaintive and fragile when he hits falsetto range.

Wright—who released his spare and pleasing album In the Woods a few months back—wrote “Christmas Ain’t Christmas This Year” especially for the set. The song peaks with Wright’s voice high and quavering, cushioned by a subtle wave of guitars and horns, and lamenting the gaping hole a lover has left behind. It’s not a new theme, to be sure, but he treats it compellingly.

Treva Blomquist’s take on “Silent Night” doesn’t depart considerably from the well-known original, though she’s added subtle drive to the song with softly chugging acoustic guitar and piano, and done some minor tweaking of the chord progression. The track’s greatest appeal is her flawless, honeyed soprano.

Gortmaker—who spearheaded and produced the project—contributes the lulling carol “Still, Still, Still,” which closes the album. In his hands, it’s more a meditative reverie than a crisply structured song. The solemnly exhaled lyrics hover behind lightly applied layers of guitar, which cradle and shift the ethereal pattern. It’s all very pretty.

This is actually Holiday Noise Volume 2. Gortmaker—a solo songwriter and member of the Blomquist-led folk-pop group Treva and the Suits—took what was a small holiday show done by MTSU students at a bookstore in 2004, added a few more performers and recorded the first Holiday Noise album last year. The latest version is built around a core group of old college friends, and as such, has a group-effort feel to it. But Gortmaker also keeps things interesting by further expanding the pool with other rising figures from the twenty-something singer-songwriter scene.

Where holiday music is concerned (if it’s fair to call it “holiday” music when other holidays—say, Hanukkah and New Year’s—are absent), it turns out that cozy and mellow are very good things to be.