Jarvis Cocker’s fireside vocals and Feist’s ember-afterglow chorus are nestled amongst Gonzales’ piano and a flute. The song gently encourages us to reimagine traditions, those we claim and those we inherit, for the generations to come.Īnother album standout is the cover of Snow Is Falling In Manhattan by David Berman, a fellow Christmas-loving Jew. This tinseled, sugar-plum collaboration with Feist, complete with miniaturized Jeunet-esque stop-motion animated video, balances delicate whimsy with an ecological message in disguise as a home decorating tutorial. Christmas is a typical time for superficial happiness, but also a time for reflection and mourning the sad events throughout the year, and to play the songs in a minor key makes Christmas more authentic and realistic.”Ī very chilly christmas finds its star in The Banister Bough, the album’s sole original song. “Christmas is a time of very mixed intense emotion for me, and the existing canon often sounds like a forced smile. From Wenceslas to Wham, the great revelation of this collection is the restrained, distilled beauty of Gonzales’ signature minor key interpretations. With his unabashed loyalty to melody, Gonzales’ approach deftly navigates the myth of one shared songbook with a collection that opts for nuance over pomp. There’s grandeur and solemnity, there’s austerity and merriment, and there’s Mariah Carey. His humble service to this calling lends a certain inevitability to this announcement: Chilly Gonzales has made a Christmas album.įrom feudal oldies to newer holiday pop canon, A very chilly christmas surveys a broad scope of seasonal repertoire and sentiment.
Christmas carols are beloved, largely uncontested vessels for emotion and memory, gratitude and generosity.Ĭomposer, showman in slippers and a bathrobe, he has a deep dedication to his craft: he’s an Entertainer. Christmas music: a peculiar genre that offers everything from solemnity to exuberance.