New Christmas Video "The Warden's Carol"!
The Christmas songs you hear on the radio are usually all recorded cheap and dirty at some point in the previous summer by sad, sweaty, desperate music producers looking for a quick money cash in. I don't mind the quick, cheap and dirty part I just feel it should be done as close as possible to the day itself so you get more of that properly desperate Christmas element in there. Each year I write and record a new Christmas song in the last couple weeks before Christmas, each with their own accompanying music video also done within a week or so before the 25th of December. Oftentimes this harsh deadline creates some real inspiration, although it's almost always more than a little janky (especially the video part). It's my little Christmas tradition that mostly annoys my wife as it keeps me very busy on the first couple days of her holidays, I think next years will be my last one, I figure 13 is a nice lucky number for a completed Christmas album.
Anyway, this years song is a pretty topical and lyrically bleak song about injustices of prison labour, border militias, refugee concentration camps. The reason I enjoy writing Christmas songs is that I like writing tragedies and if you contrast anything awful against the banal sentimentality of Christmas it immediately becomes three times as tragic. I’m quite happy with the song this year, the progression is quite satisfying to play and the vocal harmonies in particular really work well I think. The video is okay, I kinda ran dry on ideas for the music video that I could do in three days, so I just set up the green screen with a couple coloured lights and did a bunch of li syncing takes with my nylon stringed guitar. It’s not my worst Christmas video.
Here’s the Christmas album as it stands so far. Merry Christmas!