Music Blogs

We here at Arthur Magazine are not immune to the Christmas season's charms. Naturally, any holiday where people even attempt to get along can't help but warm our hearts, even with all those ads on TV trying to con us into buying insanely ugly diamond bracelets for our fictionally tasteless significant others. And, no doubt, one of the best things about this time of year is the music.

After all, for all the garbage that is piped up through the furnaces this time of year, there can be no denying the charm of seeing people get genuinely excited about the ritual of actually listening to music, much of which is more than a century or two old. It's WEIRD when you think about it. And not only do people listen to the canon, musicians are inspired, every year, to actually ADD to the canon. DOUBLE weird. It's the equivalent of an annual poetry contest. (A poetry contest where most of the entries are TERRIBLE, but still…)

As John Coulthart so aptly pointed out in his latest Arthur blog, Victorian stories about Christmas, particularly Dickens' fable "A Christmas Carol", often used ghosts as featured players/plot devices because the western world's most popular holiday takes place at the bleakest time of the year. If you were measuring spooky, December 25th has it in spades over October 31st. Which is why, I think, that some of the best Christmas music is the moodiest Christmas music. Give it a minor key and add another shot of whiskey to the cider, ma! The weather outside IS frightful, for the love of Pete Relic.

So if we can agree on the idea that most of the most successful Christmas music is, if not outright sad, a little downbeat, then we'd like to introduce you to the best purveyor of misty-eyed Yule melancholy we've heard in a looooong time: Imagene Peise, the winner of this year's "We Did Something Awesome With Music You Are So Familiar With It's Your 23rd Chromosone" sweepstakes.

The brilliant bio on "her" mySpace page is certainly a put-on, but it's a heartfelt, beautiful bit of jive. An excerpt, for example:

"Atlas Eets Christmas stands as a missed opportunity. It's uncanny coincidence of a Middle Eastern talent embracing such American themes (jazz piano, Silver Bells and Winter Wonderland) as we know now, are glimpses of a future that was never to be. With her powerful message of kindness and peace we can only imagine if Ms. Peise had become an international star her influence could have, in some other space and time, prevented the current apocalyptic environment."

And isn't that what we'd ALL kind of wish for – a lovely musical prodigy to help show the world the way in the dark months? Even though it's not "real" real (look closely at the artwork of Imagene Peise's one and only record for clues as to the real identity of the musician(s) involved here), it's real enough. Imagene Peise's music is a blessed and quiet Joyeux Noel freakout, Christmas traditionals heard through Vince Guaraldi-in-India 4-D headphones.

Gabe Soria is a contributing editor to Arthur Magazine. His previous post was about wild new pirate music in New Orleans.