Over the Rhine - "Snow Angels"

I only downloaded Over the Rhine's Snow Angels earlier today, but it pretty much blew me away on first listen. Right from the smoky, jazzy opening song, "All I Ever Get for Christmas is Blue", the album just felt like something special, and by the time I was wiping tears from my eyes while listening to "Snow Angel", I had made my mind up to post about it as soon as possible.

I actually find it very interesting that Snow Angels is not a new album - it was in fact released in 2006 and even has its own Wikipedia page. From that page, I learned that the song "Goodbye Charles" was inspired by Vince Guaraldi's compositions from A Charlie Brown Christmas, although that would likely be obvious to anyone who is familiar with the latter - what's most amazing of all is how authentic they managed to make it sound. As a side note, try listening to the soundtrack for A Charlie Brown Christmas on your favourite portable music player the next time you're out for a walk (preferably in the snow) - I did it earlier today, and I don't think anything could have wiped the smile from my face.

While the album as a whole is great, the highlight for me was without a doubt "Snow Angel". Think of songs like Joni Mitchell's "River" and Sarah McLachlan's "Winter Song" - "Snow Angel" fits very nicely alongside them. It is beautiful, but absolutely heartbreaking at the same time. Here's a sampling of the lyrics:

Snow angel, snow angel
Someday I'm gonna fly
This cold and broken heart of mine
Will one day wave goodbye
Goodbye to this cruel wicked world
And all the tears I've cried
Snow angel, snow angel
I'll meet you in the sky

One final thing worth mentioning is that, with the exception of "One Olive Jingle" ("a lounge-inspired take on 'Jingle Bells'"), the entire album consists of original material.

Happy listening!

URL: http://noisetrade.com/overtherhine

Mormon Tabernacle Choir

I've been listening to Christmas music for a couple of weeks now - mainly stuff from my own collection, but I've also been working a bit of newly downloaded material in as well. I'm still waiting to find something that really blows me away, but at the same time, I'd really like to start sharing some new music on the blog. The first thing that has really caught my ear this year has been this collection of free Christmas music from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir (you may have to scroll down the page a bit to get to the music - as I write this, it's currently the third major heading on the page, under "The True Meaning of Christmas" and "Holy Bible").

I have to admit, I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of these songs. The choir really adds a sense of power and grandeur to a lot of songs, like "Hallelujah" (and just to be clear, this is Handel's "Hallelujah", not Leonard Cohen's) and "Bring A Torch, Jeannette, Isabella", while songs like "Silent Night" and "O Holy Night" are given a very tender and hauntingly beautiful treatment.

As a small side note, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir was actually featured on Josh Groban's Noël album (on the last track, "O Come All Ye Faithful"), so if you have heard that album, you are likely already at least somewhat familiar with what this choir can do (I myself actually became interested in Josh Groban after he was featured on Oprah's Holiday Hits sampler that I posted about way back in 2008 - Noël made for some great background music while I spent a couple of hours wrapping presents on Christmas Eve that year).

Happy listening!

URL: http://mormon.org/Christmas#music