With Thanksgiving behind us, it's official -- the holiday season has begun.
And that means it's now fully appropriate to break out the Christmas music, something we at Pop & Hiss can admit we began inappropriately doing a few weeks ago. Check out Randy Lewis' recent roundup of this year's new offerings -- including albums from Cee Lo Green, Scotty McCreery and the rather zombie-eyed coupling of Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta -- here.
Among 2012's standouts, as Randy noted, is Tracey Thorn's "Tinsel and Lights," on which the English art-pop singer (and occasional Everything But the Girl frontwoman) takes her characteristic brainy-sadsack approach to material a bit outside the Christmas-music canon. Among Thorn's selections are the White Stripes' "In the Cold, Cold Night," Stephin Merritt's "Like a Snowman" and Low's "Taking Down the Tree," performed as a duet with Green Gartside of the great Scritti Politti.
In a making-of documentary posted by MTV Hive on Monday, Thorn says she didn't want to make "a completely traditional Christmas record" and so opened up the repertoire to songs "that either mentioned Christmas or winter or snow or just being cold -- anything at all." (Watch the 10-minute video below.)