Ah, the Christmas record. A long and sometimes glorious tradition for artists you might expect (Bing Crosby, Mariah Carey, Hilary Duff) as well as some you might not (Low? The Charlie Daniels Band? New Order?) and some artists who seem to exist solely to produce such releases (thank you, Mannheim Steamroller and Trans-Siberian Orchestra). After all, enough music has to be supplied to satisfy all those radio stations that switch over to an all-holiday format on November 1st and keep going until January…
Anyway, for all of their punk-pop pretensions, Relient K are a Christian band at heart, and so the appearance of the painfully-titled Let it Snow Baby…Let it Reindeer is hardly a surprise. Especially since, don’t you know, it’s actually their second Christmas album. If you happened to miss last year’s Deck the Halls, Bruise Your Hand, however, never fear — Relient K have helpfully included that entire album within their new effort. If you did buy the other one…well, now you’ll have something to trade in the next time you go to FYE, eh?
Some of the material is about what you might perhaps expect — “Angels We Have Heard On High” is given a straight-up mallpunk arrangement, complete with the whininess that such bands all-too-commonly mistake for “attitude.” “12 Days of Christmas” starts out that way, but it gets gradually sillier and sillier, eventually including massive choirs, nu-metal screaming, and a whole lot of missing words. It’s kind of fun, actually, in the same way that, say, the better moments of Weird Al Yankovic are fun — good for one nice laugh, though I’d hate to have to listen to it repeatedly. (I can’t even say that much for “I’m Getting Nuttin’ For Christmas,” alas, though it tries the same formula.)
A fair amount of the material, however, tends toward the staid. “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” which is full of busy electric guitars that don’t actually do anything, is sort of like an attempt to update the sound of The Beach Boys’ Christmas album, a nod that’s even more obvious on the surprisingly good (with the exception of the smarmy spoken-word break) a capella rendition of Auld Lang Syne that closes the disc. Most of the original material — and there are six of those on the disc — is even blander; “I Celebrate the Day,” “In Like A Lion (Always Winter),” and especially the Fray-lite “I Hate Christmas Parties” sound like half-hearted attempts to get the band booked for a Very Special Holiday Episode of Grey’s Anatomy. If there’s anything worse than faux-snottiness, it’s faux-weepiness.
I love Christmas, believe it or not, and I’m always on the lookout for something new to add to my collection of seasonal music. But trust me, this isn’t a good choice. The interpretations of standards are subpar, and the originals aren’t going to be entering the holiday canon anytime soon. And beyond that, over half of this forty-eight minute album has been previously released, which means that they’ve padded out their EP with stuff fans probably already own so they can charge them for a full-length. Icky.
Release date: October 23, 2007
Label: Capitol
Rating: 3/10
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