Welcome back to Prog's Christmas Tracks Of The Week.
A slight deviation this week, as Christmas is only a week away, and the world seems to be slowly moving into holiday mode, and, well, basically, no one's really releasing very much at all.
So we've decode to collate all the seasonal prog sings that have come our way this year - the new ones mind, not the evergreen classics like I Believe In Father Christmas or The Jethro Tull Christmas Album - and put them all in the mix for a final Tracks Of The Week for 2022. And you lot can vote for which one was your favourite.
Before that however, congratulations to Dutch prog metallers Kingfisher Sky who triumphed last week, followed by Mad Painter and Bruit ≤. Kingfisher Sky are back this week because, well, it's Christmas!
We break for Christmas this week and don't return until early January so the site will be slowing down a bit over the festive period. But we'll be back with an all-new Tracks Of The Week in January. For now though, have a great Xmas and get voting...
Big Big Train - Snowfalls
“In 2017 I wrote Snowfalls as a more melancholy Christmas song," says Big Big Train's Greg Spawton. "It is about the loneliness that some people feel at a time of year when others are able to celebrate with family and friends. I was inspired by a seeing an elderly lady who lives locally to me walking down the road with her similarly old dog. Her kids had clearly left home, it was snowing and she was finding the walk hard. But she was somehow indefatigable and defiant." The band recorded a live version and a new video during the band's soundcheck on September 5 at the Boerderij venue in Zoetermeer in the Netherlands on the band’s short tour this autumn.
Amanda Lehmann - An Old Christmas Day
"Crackers and paper chains and light on the tree.." sings Amanda Lehamnn on An Old Christmas Day. “I wanted to evoke a kind of happy nostalgia with this Christmas tune, capturing the atmosphere of a cosy old-fashioned Christmas day and embracing the magic-filled imagination of the child in all of us with snowscapes and Christmas characters," she says. The song was originally a shorter piece recorded for a musical advent calendar for Radio TFSC, Lehmann extended the song and performed it live with Steve Hackett at Trading Boundaries.
Midas Fall - White Christmas
Prog Award winning duo Midas Fall have covered the perennial Christmas favourite in their own moodily effective way, bringing their glacial ambient post-rock sheen to the Irving Berlin that song Bing Crosby made famous in the 1942 film Holiday Inn (although I have to be honest and admit I prefer the 1954 movie of the same name!). Midas Fall however have taken the song and made it their own, a beautifully crafted cover that
Rob Reed and Les Penning - Stop The Cavalry
Back to last week and Magenta's Rob Reed and his frequent collaborator Less Penning and their cover of Jona Lewie's 1980 anti-war song Stop The Cavalry. “It’s now become a tradition of ours to do a Christmas single, usually at the last minute," says Penning. "I still hear Stop The Cavalry on the radio, in shops and also on various Christmas albums. It’s a great tune and when I suggested it to Rob, we managed, between the two of us, to bring out something new from the song.” It's Reed's video that really hits home here. “We also had a lot of fun producing the quirky video that accompanies it," adds Reed, who directed the video. Watch out for the dark twist at the end...
Kingfisher Sky - Winter Waltz
And finally to last week;s winners, Dutch prog metal sextet Kingfisher Sky and a song based on a Scandinavian Folk tune by Filarfolket. 19 years ago we wrote a song celebrating the birth of our niece on the 2nd of December," the band say. It was a story we told her about the snowy forest and and the swans on the lake. We have re-recorded it to celebrate Christmas and to think back about that magical time when the forest indeed seemed to be made of snow."
