CD Review: Plastic Snow

I know what you’re thinking: it’s already almost-February and therefore much too late to still be thinking about Christmas. Well as much I’d usually agree, there are still some places in the country where persons are contending with single-digit temperatures and digging their cars out of the snow, if not leisurely making snowmen. The harsh reality is that  it is technically wintertime for about another two months, so we might as well settle in.

Oddly enough, the fanciful holiday/Christmas compilation “Plastic Snow” revolves in part around the feel of Christmastime in Los Angeles, one of the more common geographic locations that has never found relevance to the phrase “White Christmas”. 70-degree weather in December, much? Nonetheless, sixteen LA-based bands have applied their extensive talents towards the making of a quirky tracklist for the benefit of one’s music collection, but also largely for charity towards human services organization Midnight Mission. All profits from the MP3 sales went to the Mission (read: 100%), and if that isn’t giving, we don’t know what is.

As much as we love sitting on the laps of  Uncles Frank, Bing, and Nat, it’s refreshing to be given a different brand of poetic, a welcome unconventional quality of lyrics and musical phrase that conveys the same comfort of the holiday season, whether with family or playing it solo. From vocals that rival the seductively sweet-sounding songstresses of the sixties (“Christmas Drill” - Dreaming Fern) to a funeral-waltz tempo of a traditional favorite (“Silent Night” – Sara Lov & Dustin O’Halloran) to dealing with an identity crisis involving jolly old St. Nick, or perhaps St. Nicole (“Hot Sleigh” – The Monolators), “Plastic Snow” is a fun listen that quite clearly beholds enough magnetism to carry us through until at least the last week of February.

Recommended tracks: “Christmas California” – The Sweet Hurt;  “The Last December” – The Hectors; “As the Day Breaks (Montreal Mix)” – Carmen Rizzo (Feat. Grant Lee Phillips)

Photo via Confessions of a Would-Be Hipster