Christmas Christmas (2017)
1. Merry Christmas Darlings
2. I Wish it Could Be Christmas Every Day
3. I Wish it Was Christmas Today
4. Merry Xmas Everybody
5. Please Come Home for Christmas
6. Remember Christmas
7. Run Rudolph Run
8. Father Christmas
9. Silent Night
10.Merry Christmas (I Don't Want to Fight Tonight)
11.Our Father of Life
12.Christmas Christmas
A Cheap Trick Christmas album? Well, why not? If Billy Idol can release one, it should be fair game for anyone. If we're honest, Christmas albums mostly serve as a novelty. For most of us, when the holiday season rolls around, if we're not sick of the ubiquitous xmas tunes already, we tend to have a few favorite records that we stick to, or we might just cue up our favorite streaming service and click the shuffle button.
Anyway, this record is quite good. In fact, its better than most with the Christmas moniker. Most of the tunes here aren't what you would call "standards", so its very easy to enjoy after repeated listens since it really does sound fresh. They cover tunes that were written (or made famous by) Roy Wood, The Ramones, Chuck Berry, and the Kinks. They also throw in a few originals that, while pleasant, wont necessarily be remembered by the masses a few years from now.
We then must remember that Cheap Trick has a fellow named Robin Zander as its lead singer, and Robin can sing anything and sound beautiful. Perhaps that's why the band has included a few slow/traditional songs that sound a tad out of place. When we hear Silent Night, for example, right between The Kinks and The Ramones, its quite jarring. Yet as many times as we've all heard Silent Night, you would be hard pressed to find a better version than what the band provides here. Yes, Zander sounds that good. One almost wishes that the band (or at least Zander) would release an album entire of Christmas hymns exclusively.
On that same (literally) note, this is probably why the band chooses to cover the Harry Nilsson beautifully penned tune Remember Christmas. Again, very out of place, but Zander makes the song sound so freakin' incredible, one is again tempted to never listen to any other version. (To be honest, I never knew it was even a Christmas song. I also always thought the title of the tune was simply "Remember".) The band even includes an original that falls under the sweet-and-also-religious category Our Father of Live. Its quite a nice song, and one probably raised their eyebrows somewhat when they read the credits and discovered this church-ish piece is actually an original.
So this thing is fun. It is a tad repetitive. I mean, just look at the song titles and you can already see a too-familiar pattern. As far as holiday albums go, this one still ranks higher than most, and although inconsistent with mood, the boys get a free pass for making all of the tunes sound so fresh and welcome.
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