Sunday Afternoon Listening Cafe #7

White Xmas Lies, Magne Furuholmen

Not in the Christmas spirit? Tired of all the Christmas standards? This album is for you. As Magne Furuholmen said upon its release:

(I am) ashamed to be part of a Christmas which these days seems to be mostly about buying more and more sh** that no one needs or even really wants…a tacky, superficial celebration in stark contrast to the original Christmas message of hope, charity, and compassion”…(The album is) a dark, melancholic Christmas record – as an antidote to the cheesy xmas song covers that everyone and his brother churns out these days.

I don’t have a lot of time to write today, so if you want a breakdown of the album, let me point you to this great album review by Essentially Pop. To give you a sense, the final track is a cover of the Kinks’ Father Christmas, in which a mall Santa is mugged. (Furuholmen wrote all the other tracks.) This album made me really sit up and notice the first time I heard it and it’s now a Christmas staple for me.

Don’t recognize the name of the artist? You probably know him by one of his other gigs, being part of a-ha. This was his third solo album and the first one he released over social media. He’s also a visual media artist (the album cover is his work) and that shows in his collaboration with experimental German theatre/performance duo Vegard Vinge and Eva Müller on the video of the single This Is Now America. It’s the second video, as the first was done by his son Thomas Vincent and some segments survive in the final official version. Here it is as a bonus.

Enjoy this very melancholic album!