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Chandler Travis and Friends
ANOTHER CHRISTMAS GIFT FOR YOU
(Sonic Trout)
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Chandler Travis’s holiday album is like a good Christmas party: it starts off fun and friendly and just gets wackier as it goes along. Like his buddies in NRBQ, Travis is always torn between urges to create classic pop and to make fun of it, and this CD — recorded over about a decade with a handful of bands and collaborators — gives free rein both to his tunesmith and his prankster sides. The latter comes out ahead, but he manages to get in a handful of solid, straight-ahead pop tunes — two of which are called "Christmas Time" — before the party goes out of bounds. The first "Christmas Time" is a mandolin-driven folk-rocker that could pass for vintage Lovin’ Spoonful; the second is a pretty ballad that goes back to Travis’s earlier Incredible Casuals days and features both of NRBQ’s Spampinato brothers. Travis gets in another gem with "If We Can Just Make It Through Christmas," in which a cynical lyric gets the Phil Spector melodic treatment. After that, the assembled company get progressively deeper into the eggnog. There’s a lounge-singer takeoff called "Christmas Without You Sucks." A choral treatment by Erik Lindgren of one of his TV-commercial jingles. A three-minute gap, credited to No One and titled "Totally Silent Night." (Someone had to think of that sooner or later.) And the obvious hit: "Christmas in Athol," sung of course in a lisp and featuring the chorus "Almost like Christmas in Leominster, but better." This is a disc best enjoyed wearing either a Santa Claus hat or a lampshade.
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