Albums

Various - Filthy Little Christmas

Bill Cummings 12/12/2005

Rating: 4/5

Christmas albums don't always make pleasurable listening; often cynically produced cash-inn's on the festive period that fade into novelty once January the first rolls around. But Filthy Little Angels, the label that brought you the Long Blondes and the Boyfriends, has a cure - a free download album containing a whopping twenty four tracks! Yes a bumper pre Christmas present, it features many of their friends new and old.
You have the excellent DIY Casio-politico Scot pop of the Vichy Government, who not only contribute the opening instrumental but a brilliantly ironic DIY cover of The Long Blondes anti Xmas song “Christmas is Cancelled”, sample line (“Stood by the fireplace/You look ridiculous/ You can't just come and stay here like you did last Christmas/ You know what you did wrong/Christmas is cancelled this year.”)

And What Will Be Left Of Them contribute a twisted little indie pop cover of 'Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas' with added filth, while The Swear chime in with an ice cool art rock version of “All I want for Christmas” and Captain Polaroid's “If You Came On Christmas Day” has a brilliant Bright Eyes style about its strummed twinkling melody, juxtaposing the smaltzyness of Christmas with his twitchy lyrics.

Elsewhere there are less festive treats that just highlight quality music and don't really tie into the crimbo theme. Pinks and “Heartfrog” sounds like Ladytron going for a swim with My Bloody Valentine whilst Mynx's “Do you like My beaver” is sleazy La pop punk. GIITTV favourites The Sailplanes contribute an elegant slice of breezy tuneful punk “I see you Walk.”, while the other highlights for me come in the shape of Alice and The Enemies and “Buddy” with its dark P J Harvey style menace, and October All Over's glorious slice of dynamically rocking female fronted Early Manics sparring with Elastica style goodness “Romans Vs Trojans” - where the hauntingly sleazy vixen-esque voice of “I want to fuck you up” that softly seduces you before giving you particularly painful love bite. Plus there are other GIITTV favourites that pop up here, the Bridge Gang, The International Karate Plus and Akira.

As good as a lot of this material is it does seem a tad excessive to lump some of these twenty-four! Tracks onto what is essentially meant to be a Christmas album. Still because it's free to download from their site and it's musically great we won't complain too much; in fact we recommend this album to all indie kids fed up with Christmas Top of the pops. There's a whole filthy little world of DIY indie here for you to explore.