Acoustic christmas songs (eight mp3s for download)

Enjoy some selected minimalist acoustic christmas tunes by Erlend Øye (Kings of Convenience, Whitest Boy Alive), E (Eels) and more. I guarantee you peaceful Christmas atmosphere if you fire up this playlist at medium to low volume on your living room stereo. Happy holidays, everyone!

mp3: Erlend Øye - Last Christmas

mp3: E - Everything 's Gonna Be Cool This Christmas

mp3: Mew - She Came Home For Christmas (acoustic version)

mp3: Coldplay - Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

mp3: Seabear - We Like Winterclothes

mp3: Arcade Fire - Jingle Bell Rock

mp3: Okkervil River - Listening To Otis Redding At Home During Christmas

mp3: The Magnetic Fields - Everything Is One Big Christmas Tree

Grizzly Bear's take on Montreal and Hot Chip

mp3: of Montreal - I Was A Landscape In Your Dream (Grizzly Bear remix)

mp3: Grizzly Bear - Boy From School (Hot Chip cover)

It's winter again, it's starting to get ridiculously cold again, and once again I'm turning to Grizzly Bear. Where I live, it's been creeping down to 3.2 degrees Fahrenheit / minus 16 degrees Celcius recently, and most of all I just feel like crawling down into some warm place and hibernate until spring, bear style. Since I'm not able to do that, however, turning to the slow and warming sounds of the four Brooklyn bears once more is a good second option.

You've probably all heard the band's three studio albums that are playing on repeat on my speakers these days, but I thought I'd share two rarer tracks with you today. Both are Grizzly Bear doing beautiful interpretations of songs by two of my other favorite bands. In the first, they turn one of the most easily overlooked tracks from of Montreal's most overlooked album into an amazingly atmospheric and layered little beauty, perfectly juxtaposing the soft Barnes vocals of the minimalist original with lush Grizzly Bear-esque soundscapes. In the second, they turn one of Hot Chip's very best, the electronic and synth-driven - and strangely uplifting - Boy From School, into a melancholic and mostly acoustic piece that relies almost exclusively on the beautiful and strong vocals, rather than electronic beat.

Hope you'll enjoy them! And continue to enjoy (or perhaps even discover or rediscover?) Grizzly Bear.

Video: Animal Collective - Bluish

Animal Collective just released a (belated) official video for 'Bluish', one of my all-time favorite songs by the band. 'Bluish' is from their highly acclaimed 2009 album Merriweather Post Pavillion, and this very trippy video in my opinion matches the psychedelic sound of the album perfectly.

mp3: Animal Collective - Bluish

The lyrics are simply beautiful. Try giving this stripped-down acoustic cover a listen, and this fact will probably become even more apparent to you:

mp3: Sondre Lerche - Bluish (cover)

Amazing old and young people (Sonic Youth and Beach House covers)

Here are some unusual cover versions of two songs I love. These two videos are both really impressive and touching - Young@Heart and PS22 are such awesome choirs!

Young@Heart - Schizophrenia
cover version of Sonic Youth - Schizophrenia



Amazing old people.

PS22 Chorus - Zebra
cover version of Beach House - Zebra



Amazing young people.

Christmas playlist

I hope everyone's enjoying the holidays. Here are some tracks I listen to a lot these days, to get into the christmas mood - my alternative/indie rock Christmas playlist!

Eels - Everything's Gonna Be Cool This Christmas

Eels - Christmas Is Going to the Dogs

"Baby Jesus, born to rock." - "Get off your sled and go to bed - don't you ever tire?". Mr. E, of the US alternative rockers Eels, knows how to rock my Christmas!

Drawing Constellations - All I Want For Christmas Is You (Ooh Baby)

Drawing Constellations - Chestnuts Roasting

Canadian indie rockers Drawing Constellations do a couple of awesome and very fresh-feeling takes on two christmas classics.

Erlend Øye - Last Christmas

A track from one of Norwegian Erlend Øye's (of Kings of Convenience and Whitest Boy Alive) acoustic solo shows. He too does a cover of a Christmas song I'm quite tired of, but does a very sweet interpretation of the song. I'm honestly not very fond of WHAM at all, but Øye manages to turn this cheesy 80s hit into something completely different - something beautiful!

Mew - She Came Home For Christmas

Danish indie/prog rockers Mew wrote this gem in the mid-nineties, and it has been released as a Christmas single over and over again between 1997 and 2003 in Denmark and the rest of the world. Here's the 2003 version from their breakthrough album Frengers. A sweet ballad that will ensure Christmas mood!

of Montreal - Christmas isn't safe for animals

Psychedelic indie poppers of Montreal, from Athens, Georgia, just being their usual weird selves. This quirky Christmas song is really charming!

XTC

XTC is one of the more interesting bands to spring from England's 80's post-punk / new wave movement.  The band was much more popular with critics than with public consumers, though XTC did see some moderate chart success later in their career.  The first two mp3's come from their 1982 album, English Settlement.  The third is a cover of one of their more popular singles, "Making Plans For Nigel", performed by Primus.  God bless you, Les Claypool.

from English Settlement (1982)

Jason and The Argonauts

English Roundabout

from Primus' Miscellaneous Debris (1992)

Making Plans For Nigel 

The Walkmen

from You & Me (2008)
Dónde Está la Playa
Seven Years of Holidays

from Pussy Cats (2006)
Subterranean Homesick Blues (Bob Dylan)
Don't Forget Me (Harry Nilsson)

from A Hundred Miles Off (2006)
Louisiana
Another One Goes By (Mazarin)

from Bows + Arrows (2004)
The Rat
Little House Of Savages

from Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me Is Gone (2002)
Wake Up
Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me Is Gone
Revenge Wears No Wristwatch

The Walkmen have released five studio albums (the fourth, Pussy Cats, is a song for song cover of Harry Nilsson's 1974 album Pussy Cats.) I'm kinda partial to their first two albums as well as their latest. Idk, 2006 just wasn't their year in my opinion, not to diss the song "Louisiana" (the highlight of that album).

Favorite Covers... Clem Snide/Aguilera

Clem Snide's cover of Christina Aguilera's "Beautiful" can be found on their Beautiful EP (2003). If anyone is really begging for an mp3, leave a comment.

The Soft Pack

The Soft Pack used to go by the name The Muslims.

from the Parasites/Walking With Jesus single (2009)
Walking With Jesus (Spacemen 3 cover)

from The Muslims (2009)
Future Rock
Bright Side

Harlem

Isn't it weird when you see the same word pop up around the music scene in album titles or band names?

from Free Drugs ;-) (2008)
South of France
Beautiful & Very Smart
Red Herring

...and just in case that picture from the Austin Chronicle didn't scare you, here's their cover of Q Lazzarus
Goodbye Horses

RE: Favorite covers

Dinosaur JR - Just Like Heaven (The Cure cover)

Broken Social Scene - Feel The Pain (Dinosaur JR cover)

No Age - It's Oh So Quiet (Bjørk cover)


I know I'm a bit late, but I'm finally following up Jack and Girl Scout's cover song sharing. First up is one of the 90s best bands covering one of the 80s best. The in-your-face guitar solos, heavy soundscape and raw vocals of Dinosaur JR combined with the excellent lyrics and ingenious melody of The Cure makes for a cover song that truly takes the best from two worlds. The only downside is the very odd ending. Don't start worrying that there's something wrong with you mp3 file - it's the same on the physical album.

Next is Broken Social Scene, a 00s band covering their heroes from when they grew up: Dinosaur JR. I love this cover because the band's just strutting with positive attitude and genuine love for music - it's not hard to imagine how good the atmosphere in the crowd must have been as well during the recording. Also, this song is great because Broken Social Scene here give a rare explicit reference to their "heavier rock" influences. Influences that have only been hinted on in a very few songs, such as Cause = Time, which is quite different from the band's usual post rock and ambient influenced music.

Finally, one of my favorite new discoveries this year doing a cover of one of my absolute favorite female artists. I saw Björk live in Japan in February, and saw No Age at a festival in Norway in August. Both shows were stunning experiences that I'll remember when thinking back on the music year of 2008. Imagine my excitement when I found this song a few months back - No Age doing a spectacular rework of a Björk classic. I became a No Age fan at their concert, and this song made me even more confident about the great potential the young duo has.

I hope everyone survived their final exams, and wish you all happy holidays!

re: jack (2) Favorite Covers... Fiona Apple covers Across The Universe

Fiona has a beautiful name and a beautiful voice. It's the same somber, spinning style of the original sung by John Lennon on Let It Be. I've always been a sucker for a woman's voice, and the utter reassurance of the song and its power and history hit me every time. It's a very good cover of a classic while still retaining her vocal style and of course the feminine touch.

Favorite Covers...Nada Surf/Pixies

Where is My Mind?

I just recently rediscovered my absolute favorite cover of all time: Nada Surf does the Pixies. I may even venture to say that I like the cover more than the original; it's brilliantly produced and more sophisticated than the original, but then again, the Pixies were never going for sophistication, so I guess that's a little unfair. Anyway, if you've never heard it, give it a listen, it's a really interesting take on the original song.