Christmas Present: ‘A Very Postmodern Christmas’

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Here’s another incredibly fresh release for the Christmas Present pile this year, from a group I’ve been digging heavily throughout this year: Postmodern Jukebox. Continue reading

Christmas Present: Enya’s ‘And Winter Came’

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Today’s Christmas Present entry takes us to an artist with a more than 25 year history of consistent musical output: Enya. The artist’s music has remained remarkably consistent in sound across multiple albums, but her popularity has remained consistent as well. Continue reading

Christmas Present: Straight No Chaser teams up with Kristen Bell

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It’s been said here before: Kristen Bell can do no wrong. This time out, she pops up on a quirky holiday track with the a capella group Straight No Chaser, who has been featured previously on the Christmas Present playlist. Continue reading

Christmas Present: Swedish Chef’s ‘Christmas Smorgasbord’

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This year we kick off Christmas Present with a character near and dear to my heart: The Swedish Chef. While most people are familiar with the John Denver/Muppets Christmas album, a more recent one came out in the mid-2000s that expanded the holiday ouerve from the Muppets. Continue reading

Happy Thanksgiving! Back for now.

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Well, I didn’t make it posting daily for a year (a 10-week gap is confirmation of that), but I’m pretty proud of the 350+ posts that now live here on the site; it’s grown quite a bit over the past two years since I kicked it off Thanksgiving weekend of 2012. I haven’t touched the site’s design since then, although I might going into the end of the year.

I haven’t been lacking for topics; I’ve got more than 50 drafts of saved content that I wanted to post about but failed to have the time to do so. I may fill in some posts with that content since I still want it to live here, or they may lead to future posts.

But the main reason, for those keeping score, for posts to resume is the holidays are here, and one of my most fun parts of the blog is the ongoing Christmas Present project, which begins year three tomorrow. I’ll be posting holiday songs by more modern artists, which will help balance out all the Burl Ives and Bing Crosby (nothing wrong with them, but I like the holidays to have a bit more energy sometimes). Because of the growing list of recommendations, the selections will likely come a bit more heavily this year, as long as I can keep up.

For those who missed it last year, I established a Spotify playlist, and will continue to add with this year’s selections. It feels good to get this back up and running; let’s begin, and happy Thanksgiving!