As Christmas as it Gets
As you all well know, we loooove Christmas and we love Christmas music. But even we can get sort of tired of hearing the same songs after our gigantic playlist has repeated for nearly a month. But there’s one album that we feel is such a masterpiece that we have been listening to it over and over since it came out in 1999. Low’s Christmas completely redefined the genre. It’s never cheesy or saccharine. It is deeply moving, eerie, sad, beautiful, haunting, and—in the case of the outlier but most-famous song “Just Like Christmas”, somehow playful and wistful at once.
Last year, the world lost half of Low--the singer, drummer, and writer Mimi Parker. Her voice was remarkable, as was the way she and her partner in life and music intertwined their voices.
Our band has been profoundly influenced by Low. Without them, there would be no us.
So, rather than write an original this year, we felt it was important to honor their legacy by covering one of the most stirring songs on their album.
It’s about the story of Jesus’ birth and the wise men going to see him. They were told not to return to Herod’s kingdom, so they took another route home. As Low articulated it so beautifully, they took the long way around the sea. Just singing the phrase, with all of its sustained open vowels can crack your heart right open.
We had a special guest on this track, Brian’s father Chuck, who played cello, as he did in his band back in the 60s, The Galaxies. We also brought back our pal Mike Musburger to play drums. We recorded the song at home. Our collaborator Beau Sorenson mixed it, and Justin Perkins mastered it.
We hope you love it. It was made with deep reverence for its creators, Mimi Parker and Alan Sparhawk.
Here’s a video if you like to watch as you listen.
May your season be colorful, bright and warm inside.
Love, Heather and Brian