Christmas Advent #23 – All I Want For Christmas...

...is you via Salt Lake City’s finest Punks, Baby Ghosts.

... is a Dukla Prague away kit via the Wirral's finest, Half Man Half Biscuit.

That should be enough to see you through the slow hours of Christmas Eve Eve.

Christmas Advent #21 – That Christmassy Feeling

Jam jars filled with Crumpton Oaks put pay to the 19^th and 20^th but here’s the Johnny Cash & Family Christmas Show from 1977 and an added peach from the 1976 show to make up for it.

 

Christmas Advent #18 – Red Santa

Behind door 18 a Pop nugget is going off like the Christmas disco of your dreams. Like a dry cider in the hands of Jack the Rat, Sweden’s brilliant Lucky Lucky Pigeons didn’t hang around for long. Just long enough though to leave an everlasting disco ball spinning in your heart with gems like Keep on Kingie and Red Santa going off like Marceline and the Scream Queens rocking up to the open mic night for a party, armed with keyboards they found in their local charity shop.

Christmas Advent #17 – Countdown To Christmas

Christmas is only a week away. So here's the epic Glam Chops, featuring Eddie Argos and the boys getting their Glam out for Christmas like Wizard spinning upside down on a barrel of Crumpton Oaks in the corner of the best discotheque ever.

Christmas Advent #16 – The Generation That Nobody Remembered

Bursting from the door today is 10 years of pissing on Zane Lowe’s smirking face and the whole of 6 Music's “indie” back catalogue via The Indelicates.

As our pal Eddie Argos said “…the Indelicates have been my favourite new band in every end of year poll I’ve been asked to complete in the last four years, but that is not enough. They are going to become the answer to every question put to me…”

The Indelicates are back and armed with another cluster of nuggets that kick up shimmering shit-storms in 'Elevator Music'

Christmas Advent #15 – Days In Between

Today’s treat is a storming set from The Stammer. It shoots across Philadelphia like Kerouac and Moriarty picking up the lost souls, broken dreams, faded friendships, aching hearts, small pockets of hope, and the burnouts and the left-behinds. Lines sparkle and shoot from guitars and explode in your mind like tiny fireworks letting you take from it what you need.

Christmas Advent #14 - Abominable Snowman in the Supermarket

The window opens today to reveal some brilliant snowman action from the American Shakin' Stevens Jonathan Richman.

Christmas Advent #13 – Don’t Forget The First One

As Dai Disco spent the weekend inside a barrel of Crumpton Oaks, emerging only to enter the wrong door and proceed anyway to empty the fridge of its cans like Phantom Phil on his way home from a bender, there was no number 12.

To more than make up for it, number 13 is a shit-kicking punk treat from San Francisco’s Joyride! Fuzzy guitars laced with razor sharp edges whip up a storm that stays with you like the cloud over Daffy Duck, spitting hail that cuts, scars, and has you endlessly coming back for more like morphine day in the surgery.

Christmas Advent #11 – London Bound

Today’s journey takes through Liverpool and London via Seattle’s Bleeding Gold Records. People//Talk’s version of Just Handshakes’ ‘London Bound’ burns like a long lost Joy Division nugget where light flickers and seeps though dark basement beats. Just Handshakes’ beautiful original has you simultaneously twisting and turning in melancholy dreams whilst losing your shit as if possessed under the disco ball.

Christmas Advent #10 – The Coming Rain

As Des Death wrote on the toilet door of the discotheque; The Drink are a dreamy, magical mystery tour of a Pop band, whipping up a dancing storm one part Blondie’s Heart of Glass, another The Breeders’ Cannonball, with distant strains of medieval folk. Their second LP ‘Capital’ glows with melodies that ache and twitch into magical Pop songs you don’t want to put down.

Christmas Advent #9 – Little Uneasy

We travel to New Zealand for the next slice of shimmering Pop music. It comes in the form of Fazerdaze’s dream-pop beauty ‘Little Uneasy’, which flickers like memories in the faded photographs of distant summers.

Christmas Advent #8 – Fear of Missing Out

Today’s gift comes from California’s bone-shaking Punk Poppers Great Hart. The shit-kicking ‘Dropping Out’ sounds like Bouncing Souls taps-aff sucking Crumpton Oaks through a beer helmet in Jack the Rat and Lesher’s new student digs, or even better if that’s possible. Send them all your money. Punk rock ist nicht tot!!
 

Christmas Advent #7 – You Don’t Need To Be Them

In June The Sun Days ‘Album’ screeched into my shack like Makthaverskan and Marceline's Scream Queens joyriding The Electric Pop Group’s melodies. ‘Don’t need to be them’ is just one plucked from a mine of jangling Pop nuggets, that still burns now in the cold of winter as it first did in the distant summer.

Christmas Advent #6 – Skewed

Today’s treat comes via Melbourne’s shoegaze dream-Poppers Day Ravies. Their 2015 LP Liminal Zones rolls and spikes with synths, guitar hooks and slow burning melodies that burn like a drug you can’t put down. ‘Skewed’ is just one purler from their full box of shimmering Pop beauties.

Christmas Advent #5 – Sometimes The Doubles Just Don’t Go Your Way

Legends of Countries ‘Talk About Country’ glows beautifully like the tales of The Highwaymen and Townes Van Zandt, with the understated sadness of Withered Hand sprinkled on top. Country guitars and choruses bounce along with nods, winks and joined dots from Country music’s finest to DIY Punk hero Kathleen Hanna and Indiepop legend Amelia Fletcher. Lovely stuff, as Shakin’ Stevens would say.

Christmas Advent #4 – Love is a Drug, and a Kiss is a Hit

Today’s door opens to reveal a treat from San Diego’s wonderful TV Girl. ‘Like We Planned’ is another perfect Pop mosaic cut from the dreamland of electronic samples and outsider Pop with the added gift of Madison Acid taking the scissors for a spin.

I Guess Things Happen That Way

“It happens sometimes. Friends come in and out of our lives, like busboys in a restaurant.”

The subtle sadness of a childhood ebbing endlessly away lingers evoking melancholic nostalgia. Suddenly it seems the people you used to see everyday on the streets and in the parks are not there anymore, people change, friends drift apart and go separate ways where the road splits, some will never meet again and not feel a thing, others will remain eternally connected even if they no longer know where to find one another. Kermit the frog had it on lockdown: “Life is made up of meetings and partings. That is the way of it”. I don't like it, but i guess things happen that way.

Your Own Religion – TV Girl

In the Hearts of Men – First Aid Kit

The Peacock – Beirut

Holes – Mercury Rev

Guess Things Happen That Way – Johnny Cash

What Do We Do Now? – Just Joans

All My Friends (Are Dead) - Island Twins

Brothers – The War on Drugs

Dance Floor – The Apples in Stereo

Don’t See the Sorrow – Au Revoir Simone

Getting Over You – The Bats

Where Do The Nights Of Sleep Go To When They Do Not Come To Me? – Ballboy

Don’t Be a Stranger – Esiotrot

When We Were Still Friends – Herman Dune

December 1986 – Lucky Delucci

The Way It Is – Laura Cantrell

A Song For Today #2 - CocoRosie - Lemonade

In a world where everything and everyone is becoming more alike with each passing day the need to find strangers is greater than ever. CocoRosie are beautifully strange, like the magical circus in old books, like recurring dreams that you can almost live in, with words from half heard ends of lullabies’ sprinkled on top.