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Posted on December 12, 2001October 5, 2020 by tobybenjamin

“Everything Merry and Bright”, says The New Englander

The New Englander.
December 12th, 2001.
Popular Music.
EVERYTHING MERRY AND BRIGHT.
The Great Wild Stars do Christmas.
By H. Babatunde MacNamara.
As the great Austrian constructionist philosopher Gerte Singlestein once observed, a celebration is only as festive as its newest participant. And so, skipping blithely into the fray of this year’s caroling come the newest major rock band to release a collection of songs
meant to bring the æsthetic of the mosh pit into closer proximity to the yuletide hearth. A Great Wild XXXMas, the new winter-solstitial EP from The Great Wild Stars, is not festive so much as bacchanalian, and not garland-draped so much as mucus-encrusted. In the manner of all great provocations, it at once compels, horrifies, micturates, and spell-binds. A smiling Krampus in a world of grinning St. Nicks emblazoned on every Coca-Cola can, it is the Christmas record we both long for and fear; the wassail we both drink greedily and vomit back up.
It has become a crowded field of late, the rock band holiday record, following the lead of what started as a no-doubt-well-meaning charity venture and has since metastasized into the “Very Special Christmas” industrial complex. The worst of them are one-note jokes – this plus that equals third. Who knew what Smash Mouth would sound like singing “Silver Bells?” Or what Scott Stapp would bring to “Adeste Fidelis?” Well, frankly, who cares? But when an effort to smash open the conventions of December song-singing is coördinated with a genuine mirthfulness and the volcanic grandiloquence of the true provocateur, then fuck me, lads, we might be on to something.
As with all the Stars’ offerings, the inimitable presence of Caesar (who, like the Ghost of Christmas Present, has no surname), looms large over the proceedings. He shouts and cajoles his way through his violent reconfigurations of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” and “The 12 Days of Christmas” (or rather “XXXmas,” as here presented... though actual pornography seems in short supply) with concentrated verve and unabashed brio. Who knew the words “comfort and joy” could be snarled with such malicious bravado? But his supporting cohort – especially the ever-underrated Leopold on backing (and occasional lead) vocals and keyboards – are equally important. The swirling piano and soaring falsetto on the opening of “Gentlemen” give Caesar the launching pad he needs for his ever-phallic Christmastime rocket to launch into the underbelly of December.
And, somewhat surprisingly, the boys land that sputtering shuttle into a splashdown of genuine bonhomie, in a lovely and understated version of The Pogues’ holiday near-classic “A Fairy Tale of New York”, de-dueted and hammered like copper into a burnished shield against midwinter malaise. Could Shane MacGowan’s “old slut on junk” really have been Mrs. Claus in disguise? Again, who knew?

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