November 27, 2002

NOT ALL HOLIDAY albums completely blow, just the majority of them. The coffee slinger at your local café may have better taste than to blast Muzak's ear-bleeding Christmas station all day long. But it's hard to avoid being assaulted – in malls, restaurants, shops, and offices – by the sounds of jingle bells, pipe organs, and choral voices emanating manufactured Christmas cheer. Here are a few options for offsetting sonic annoyance during the jolly holiday season.

Various artists, Punk Rock Xmas (Rhino, 1995) Many punk rockers agree that Jesus was the first true punk, which is why Punk Rock Xmas should be in everyone's holiday album collection. Quintessential punk bands like the Ramones, the Damned, and Stiff Little Fingers stomp through Christmas with raw, crusty style – in other words, streams of reverb and simple chords. The Frogs' "Here Comes Santa's Pussy" and Pansy Division's "Homo Christmas" call for a naughty holiday ("Don't be miserable like Morrissey," Pansy Division's Jon Ginoli wails. "Let me do you underneath the Christmas tree"). Spanning from 1977 to 1995, Punk Rock Xmas is a comprehensive collection, ranging from classic British to California surf, intellectual attitude to the proudly juvenile.

Low, Christmas (Chair Kickers' Union, 1999) Leave it to Low to make a Christmas album for grown-ups plagued by melancholy. Five original ballads trudge alongside "Little Drummer Boy," "Blue Christmas," and "Silent Night" through the loneliness and nostalgia of the holiday season. The sounds remain distant, as if they're coming from far across a snow-covered landscape or from the isolated depths of blurry memories. Drums boom flatly, voices sound hollow with light echoes, and white noise fuzzes in the background. Titles like "Taking Down the Tree" and lyrics like "If you were born today we'd kill you" might not leave you longing for Christmastime, but they will make you glaringly aware of the gloomy cousin to holiday cheer.

Various artists, Christmas: The Big 80's (Rhino, 2001) So many '80s comps out there offer the same set of songs from the same set of one-hit wonders who got screwed out of their reprint rights. Christmas: The Big 80's avoids that fate and doesn't sound like holiday leftovers. Dominated by early-'80s sounds, the album pulls at your nostalgia strings with boppy synthesizers and trumpet-filled choruses. Groups like Squeeze, Pat Benatar, and the Smithereens add new wave sounds to holiday classics, while the Waitresses, the Ramones, George Thorogood, the Pretenders, and others perform their own chestnut-firey songs. Most non-sucky of all is that the originals don't sound like carols, maintaining a calm balance between real music and holiday clichés.

Various artists, Corporal Blossom Presents a Mutated Christmas (Illegal Art, 2001) New York DJ-producer Corporal Blossom conceived of and curated this comp of remixed holiday classics from MP3s and vinyl as a way to deconstruct the "Christmas is sharing" message and say "screw off" to digital copyright restrictions. Corporal Blossom's "White Christmas" resurrects the vintage voices of Louie Armstrong, Elvis Presley, and Diana Ross and the Supremes, sneakily adding the word "sexy" underneath "white Christmas" and alongside vinyl scratching and a streetwise bass line; DJ Olive throws animalistic grunts into "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus." While hip-hop beats and IDM distortions keep most of the chopped-up songs uplifting, Lustmord's "Silent Night" combines offbeat explosions and rapid-fire guns with wholesome, choral voices and the lyrics' deathly drone.