Album Review: Old Crow Medicine Show - OCMS XMAS
With the arrival of Thanksgiving-Plus-One, Scrooge McSoundBites hereby grants permission to play holiday music. And OCMS XMAS is a fine place to start.
Subject matter aside, OCMS XMAS sounds pretty much like other Old Crow Medicine Crow albums. So, while the LP might not appeal to lovers of Christmas music, Old Crow fans who detest holiday sounds are still likely enjoy an OCMS XMAS.
It’s a package of playful, string-band songs - nine holiday originals, plus remakes of “Holly Jolly Christmas” and the ubiquitous, unnecessary and overwrought “Happy Xmas (War is Over)” - that mostly stick to the secular. And when Old Crow Medicine Show does go for the spiritual, it’s in a good-natured way, as when the band imagines an American-born Jesus on “Bethlehem, PA” and takes an Elvis-esque, rockabilly on “All about a Baby.”
It’s all about a baby/with a mama named Mary/rocking in a cradle/talking about peace and loving and sharing, the Medicine Men sing, delivering the good news with assistance from the Secret Sisters.
Alongside their hollering from the holler, Old Crow toss in influences from Ireland to Dixieland to Piedmont to porches anywhere south of the Mason-Dixon Line while singing about bootleg booze on “Corn Whiskey Christmas,” commercialization and broken families on “Store-Bought Christmas” and traditions both scary (“Krampus Night”) and bittersweet (“Grandpa’s Gone).”
The cover - marked To: Y’all; From: Old Crow Medicine Show - accurately describes OCMS XMAS as the gift it is. For in a world of sappy, throwaway holiday LPs, this is a rare keeper.
Grade card: Old Crow Medicine Show - OCMS XMAS - B-
