The Pinkerton Raid has announced that they will be releasing a holiday music record with particular emphasis on the winter season, Jagged Vacance: Winter Songs by Other People. Some of singer and guitarist Jesse James DeConto’s earliest memories are of singing carols in church as an elementary-school kid.
He says:
Those melodies stick with me, ‘Silent Night,’ ‘O Holy Night,’ ‘Hark, the Herald Angels Sing.’
After releasing five full-length albums of his own songs and nine years of leading annual holiday sing-alongs, DeConto was bound to make a Christmas album, but it needed to be something that suited his “three decades of spiritual evolution.”
He explains:
I wanted to record winter songs that feel essentially human, that capture the loss and longing, regret and despair, the fallen leaves and cut trees, the death of the past that somehow carries hope and possibility for the future, the most basic joy of being together.
With Vince Guaraldi, John Lennon and Elvis, DeConto was going back to his favorite childhood holiday songs. With Bon Iver, Counting Crows and Fleet Foxes, DeConto tried for a close reading and reinterpretation of some of his favorite artists of his lifetime. He enlisted producer James Phillips, whose band Bombadil has itself earned a loyal following among fans of modern Folk.
The result is a “tribute to the most natural, most elemental features of the season: the cold, the ice, the snow, the quiet, the fireside warmth, the layers of clothing, the seasonal depression, the futurist hope.”
Tracklisting:
1. “Holocene” 4:34 – Justin Vernon
2. “Norwegian Wood” 3:25 – John Lennon & Paul McCartney
3. “River” 4:31 – Joni Mitchell
4. “Blue Christmas” 3:08 – Billy Hayes & Jay Johnson
5. “Christmas Time is Here” 4:03 – Vince Guaraldi & Lee Mendelson
6. “Happy Xmas (War is Over)” 3:49 – John Lennon & Yoko Ono
7. “Fairytale of New York” 4:15 – Jeremy Finer & Shane Macgowan
8. “A Long December” 4:28 – Adam Duritz, Ben Mize, Daniel Vickrey, Matthew Malley, Charles Gillingham, and David Bryson
9. “White Winter Hymnal” 4:12 – Robin Pecknold
10. “A Hazy Shade of Winter” 3:07 – Paul Simon
