These songs will help you "Make it Through December"
By Rachel Levin, Staff Writer
Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker and Marie Ulven, a.k.a Girl In Red, all released new Christmas music this year. Ulven’s single was dreamlike and whimsical, while Bridgers’s and Baker’s covers were beautiful and unique renditions of holiday classics.
“Two Queens In A King Size Bed,” by Girl In Red is a Christmas love song. It has the sweet pining qualities of “All I Want For Christmas Is You” or “I’ve Got My Love To Keep Me Warm,” but with a hazy quality, like waking up on Christmas morning. Ulven’s love songs are traditionally a bit more uptempo, if not upbeat, but “Two Queens In A King Size Bed” was a slow and idyllic picture of spending the holidays with the one you love.
Baker’s song, “A Dreamer’s Holiday,” originally by Perry Como, depicts a bright and exciting holiday full of sweets and goodies. Originally played in 1949 and covered only once by Willie Nelson in 1983, “A Dreamer’s Holiday” is somewhat of an underground choice for a holiday cover. Still, Baker brings a unique mellow quality to the performance, crafting it into something that could fit in on her upcoming album, “Little Oblivions.”
Bridgers, unlike Ulven and Baker, released a full EP instead of just one song. She went with the classics— “Have yourself a merry little christmas,” “Christmas Song,” -- but still managed to distinguish herself among the tens of artists who have covered them. Her cover of Merle Haggard’s “If We Make It Through December,” though perhaps a bit more somber than the average holiday song, worked so well within Bridgers’s music’s established emotional range and literal-yet-metaphorical lyrical style that, at first listen, I thought was an original. Woven within a remake of a hypnotic duet of “Silent Night,” with Fiona Apple is the 7 o’clock news, juxtaposing the stoic, holy, biblical lyrics with the jarring and upsetting current reality.
Indie fans got a quality spread of holiday jams this season, as well as a break from the usual crowd of holiday artists. With a mix of the new and the old, Bridgers, Baker and Ulven have released some instant classic Christmas tracks.