More Music for the Masses

I start this post with two songs in mind that I would like to recommend, and no idea of those that will follow.

Follow me, dears.  It will be an adventure.

Traveling Alone - Jason Isbell

There's something so perfect in this song's lyrical composition, all the lovely detail in the verses that pulls you in and gives you a feel for where he is and what he's doing and what he's done.  And then the chorus repeats quite simply, "I've grown tired of traveling alone, won't you ride with me?"  It's filled with artless weariness, and yet the feeling that maybe there's a new beginning in store.  

Another Try - Chris Stapleton

Now, it's no secret that Chris Stapleton has some serious songwriting credits to his name.  He was penning country hits before he ever left the Steeldrivers to become a hit himself in the country world.  I first heard this song when listening to Josh Turner's album, Everything is Fine, and enjoyed it quite a bit.  But it wasn't until the other day that I realized Stapleton wrote this song and had his own recording of it out there.  And it wasn't until I listened to that recording that I realized how the song should be heard.  To be fully appreciated, it needs that more stripped down quality rather than the full country band treatment.  And those harmonies in the second chorus get the song and make it at the same time.  And that's without even Stapleton's vocals.  There's no growl here, folks.  It's all simple sincerity.

***

There's been a break here, not because I couldn't think of what else to say, but because life called.  When I started this post, it was midday and I was fine and fresh.  Now, you have typical tired Anna.  The time is 10:50.

Continuing on.

You're Gonna Miss Me When I'm Gone - Brooks & Dunn with Ashley McBryde

The first song of Ashley's that I remember hearing is "Andy (I Can't Live Without You)".  That's a lovely song, and you should probably listen to it.  She has a very cool style, and has worked very hard at her artistry for years and years, and only recently, thanks to Eric Church, has she become more known in the mainstream.  So, here comes Brooks & Dunn with their Reboot album, where they take their old hits and remake them with current country stars.  "You're Gonna Miss Me When I'm Gone" was already my favorite Brooks & Dunn song.  The chorus is so simple, yet perfectly captures the tension and the mood of the song.  And I knew Ashley's talent.  So I had high hopes for this remake, and I was not disappointed.  The original was country.  The reboot is beautiful country, and those harmonies give it something that it didn't have before.

JOY - Ellie Goulding

The last three songs could easily go on a playlist together.  "JOY" does not belong on that playlist.  I'm typically ambivalent toward Ellie Goulding.  She has some great songs that I don't see anyone else doing anything similar to ("Explosions," anyone?), but in general I find that her production is either too poppy or too overdone for my taste.  "JOY" starts so simply, and builds up.  I do find myself wishing that this little song's climax had been done a little more organically, but it's got such a lovely contrast between verse and chorus, and such a complex taste overall, I'm inclined to overlook that.

Learning How to Bend - Gary Allan

Whew, we're back to the country!  I think when Gary Allan is at his best, he has a very interesting, unique feel to him, something strange and subtle he adds to the song that I can't quite describe.  The songs that I would say show this the best are "Best I Ever Had," "Life Ain't Always Beautiful," and of course, "Learning How to Bend."

The Prayer - Aaron Watson

No, Aaron Watson hasn't started singing in Italian.  You remember when Johnny Cash took "Hurt" by Nine Inch Nails and made his own iconic version of it?  Well, Aaron Watson has written a song about Johnny Cash singing "Hurt."  And it's pretty darn good.  When Aaron Watson does something well, he does it really well. 

And on that note, goodnight.

Waiting: A Ramble

Now we come to the part of the show where Anna talks to herself.  But we don't need to pretend that's the oddest thing I've done on this blog.

To be exact, I'm talking to myself about myself in full view of everyone else.  And the thoughts are coming fast, so put on your seatbelt and hold onto the panic handle please.

Waiting is hard.  Even harder is waiting for something that you can see, but just can't have yet.  Harder still?  Waiting for something that you can see, think you might have someday, but just aren't sure of.  And the hardest?  Giving it up to God to do with what He will.

So that's kind of where I am, I guess.  I'm a thinker, so I think about this a lot.  It's hard to think about anything else, in fact.  But I've learned to let go of control over the last few months.  It's still incredibly difficult, but by God's grace, I can do it.

It's hard sitting here, with what's in front of me on my mind and out of reach.  Sometimes I do stupid things because of it.  But the fact is, whatever God will do is already written in stone.  I just have yet to see.

So how can I use this time effectively?  Well, by prayer, by reading God's Word, by learning patience in the face of difficulty.  By accepting that if I never have this thing, my life will be no worse for it.  By choosing to appreciate the things I have already, which are pretty great, and love the people in my life.

Sometimes, I think about what will happen if I do get this thing.  If I do, it will have been worth the waiting, and the aching, and the tears.  And if I don't, the sanctification will be worth the waiting, and the aching, and the tears.

Ultimately, Christ is the fulfillment of all good things that we see on earth.  If I'm not looking up at this thing, and then looking higher to Him, I shouldn't expect to get it, or to ever be really satisfied if I do.

Oh Lord, You are the portion of my inheritance and my cup; 
You maintain my lot.
The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places;
Yes, I have a good inheritance.

I will bless the Lord who has given me counsel;
My heart also instructs me in the night seasons.
I have set the Lord always before me;
Because He is at my right hand I shall not be moved.

Psalm 16:5-8

Head Case: Irregular Song Structure in Action

The time is 12:53 AM, and no reasonable person would be starting a blog post right now.  But here I am, clacking away at the keys, blinking as my contacts dry up on my eyeballs, all because of one little idea, one captivating thought that I could have written about in the morning, but didn't want to.

I didn't really start this post at 12:53, you see.  I started it a few minutes before, when I heard a song called "Red Bandana" for the first time.  Or maybe I started it months ago when the wonder and lonely passion of "Head Case" first met my ears.

This was supposed to be a post about two songs.  I now feel like it should be about one song and one album.

Most songs that you hear have a typical structure, you see.  At its most basic, it goes verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus.  I discovered this structure as a young one by listening to the music of Adele.  I didn't know the names of any of the parts, but I noticed the pattern and the different feelings of each of them.  Sometimes there's a third verse instead of a bridge, sometimes no bridge at all, sometimes it ends with the bridge, you get the point.  There's a reason for the popularity of this structure: it works.  It tends to hold the attention well and is flexible enough to build tension according to the needs of the artist, usually slowly culminating in the bridge.

But sometimes, that structure is thrown out the window by artists who typically use it.  Because sometimes, the song demands something else.  It's too raw, too powerful, to be contained in that useful, yet tame, box.

We'll start with Cody Jinks.

"Head Case"

I do believe I cried when I first heard this song.  It comes right at the end of his album, Lifers, and I had heard it referred to as the best song he's ever recorded.  From what I've heard, that assessment is correct.

The thing about irregular song structure is that it has to be necessary, and it has to be true to the song and to the artist.  Cody Jinks doesn't waste his time on a chorus in this song.  He doesn't care to repeat anything, until the end, when he has nothing more to do but cry the same thing out again and again.  He's getting it all out, and it's one tortured, confessional flood of words.

I know it's hard to find the words so often standing face to face.

Sometimes it takes a thin white sheet to put things into place.

The things that I could never say come flooding out somehow upon these lines.

That's your introduction.  That tells you a little bit about the nature of this song.  And then we go right into it.

I'm still fighting the same battles I've been fighting all these years.

A dream is not a dream unless you're living with the fear.

What they say will be forgotten; all that's left will be for naught,

And why?

The first line brings up an important point: all these years, he says.  Both of the artists I'm talking about tonight have been doing this music thing for years.  They know how to use traditional song structure; but they also know when not to use it and how.  

But what is he talking about here?  A dream?  And who is they?

Singers.  Songwriters.  People like him, who have devoted their lives to music.  He's talking about the fear that what he writes, what he's poured his heart and soul into, will be forgotten and come to nothing.  Why? he asks, and doesn't wait for an answer.

And it's been a long time, Lord, since I sat down and had a cry.

It's sometimes overwhelming, and I can't tell you why,

But I remember Jackson singing 'Doctor, doctor, please, my eyes.'

That last line is a reference to Jackson Browne's song, "Doctor My Eyes".  It's about having looked at all kinds of terrible things without crying or feeling pain about them, thinking at the time that that's good, and then coming to a point where he can't cry, and he asks what's wrong with himself.  I think that Cody is saying, he knows what the consequences of not crying about things are, so he's going to sit down and have a good cry, even though he doesn't quite understand why he's doing it.

Then he dives back in even deeper.

My heroes, they're all dying or they're sitting in a cell

Due to years of medicating minds that hurt so well.

There's a thin line, don't you see, between genius and insanity.

Which am I?

We've all seen what's happened to brilliant musical minds.  Jinks is approaching it from the perspective of someone who's frightened that he's on the same path.

Then we have the real kicker.

One thing that scares the hell in me is living with mortality.

And worryin' that I'm insane, talkin' to a God unseen

Must surely make me crazy; but crazy's what I'll be

'Til I'm gone.

Because you see, Jinks isn't talking to us here, or to himself.  He's talking to God.  And what he's really scared of isn't just insanity.  It's death.  Not just the death of his body, but the death of his memory, and the only way he can come to terms with this is by talking to God.  He can't believe in ultimate death.  He just can't.  Life has to go on, he says, and even if he's crazy for believing that, he's going to continue.

The problem is, he doesn't quite feel like he can reach God.  He talks to him, he believes in him, but God just seems so far right now, and Jinks just feels so alone.

And I'll scream out to the sun and to the moon and to the stars.

I'll scream until my voice finds you no matter where you are.

I'll scream until I've got no breath, and all that's left to take is death,

And I'm done.

Listen to the song for yourself.  Listen to the ending, which I haven't written out here.

There's not really a satisfying conclusion, is there?  He doesn't get answers.  Instead, it ends with his resolution to keep crying out to God even until he dies.  That's the only way to make sense of things.  That's the only way he can cope.

The structure perfectly matches the song, and it hurts a little to listen to, because it's just so true to experience.  So much of the time, we don't get answers.  We just have to keep going.

It's 2:06, and far too late to write the rest of this post.  Someday, I'll follow it up.

Right now, absorb that, and yes, definitely listen to the song.  Then read a few Psalms.  They're inspired, and generally end with the answers.

Separation in Art: A Ramble

At work today, an old man came through the drive thru.  I greeted him with my usual cheery, "Hey, how are you?"  He smiled, shrugged, and said, "Well, I'm still...above ground, so..."

It was one of those strange, amusing moments that make it easier to get through an eight-and-a-half hour workday.  A workday that was made harder by the fact that it was my first time back in over a week.

Why was I gone so long, you might ask?  Good question, Clive. 

Bright and early on Friday morning, I packed up my duffel bag, my orange backpack, and my black backpack and departed for John Denver's source of lasting fame, West Virginia, for camp staff training.  While there, my bonds with the other counselors took on a new strength, as did my cold.

Sunday afternoon, I put my orange backpack, mostly used up now, in the trunk of the Mazda, and we three started to drive back down to the South.  While I was gone to Carolina in my mind, that was not our immediate physical destination.  No, we were headed for her neighbor, Tennessee Ernie Ford. 

And now we're actually getting to the point of this whole post; because after spending the night at Virginia's house and eating lunch with her at a charming German restaurant, we drove ten minutes sideways to Elizabethton, and more importantly, Milligan College, location of the Biblical Worldview Student Conference.

This was my fourth year, and I looked forward to it eagerly.  It really is a fantastic conference.  It's interesting going from the small, intimate all-girls group at camp to two hundred fifty young men and women living on a college campus for a week, but the contrast doesn't make either less enjoyable.  I had solid friendships already in place this year, and tentative ones that I was able to build on, and as far as social activity goes, this year was by far the most comfortable for me.

I don't think it was the best year for speakers that I've had so far, but that has less to do with their individual merits and more to do with the tough task of balancing them against each other in terms of what they covered and what they didn't.  I had gone expecting to like one speaker in particular.  Rebecca's all-time favorite from her years of going, and a friend of the best teacher I've ever had.

And you know what?  I did like him.

Mr. John Hodges spoke on Christianity and music in particular, the arts in general.  His lectures went from good to amazing, and the last in particular was glorious. 

I don't know if I'm really an artist, or if I'm just trying to be.  Whatever the case, I was able to think about it more last week.  And it came to a head on Friday night, during the talent show.

A girl stood up and performed a spoken-word piece entitled "Pride" that she had written.  I am not familiar with this medium, but as far as I could tell it was well-written and well-performed.  Yet I found myself thinking as she spoke, This is not enjoyable.

And very quickly, I found two conflicting opinions colliding in my own mind.  Is art communication, or is it entertainment?

If communication, the poem performed its purpose well.  I well understood that giving over to pride that she described, that self-attack as a response to not being perfect.  But if art is entertainment, this piece was anything but.  I was not entertained.  I was uncomfortable.

Let's look at the song "My Confession" by Josh Groban.  Go ahead: give it a listen if you'd like.

Now I feel myself surrender

Each time I see your face.

I am captured by your beauty,

Your unassuming grace.

And I feel my heart is turning,

falling into place.

I can't hide it.

Now hear my confession.

Try and say those words out loud, straight up, regular-like.  They don't sound nearly as nice.  They're awkward, if not downright creepy.

Yet we set them to music, and suddenly they're beautiful.  Why?

In my thinking, there are two possible reasons.  First, because the music acts as a beautiful distraction, a layer of separation between what the words really mean and what you hear.  Second, because the music is actually part of what we feel and thus the message is incorrectly translated without it.

I've thought a lot about separation in my own writing.  Sometimes I'll write a song, and think, I would never perform this anywhere.  Even I don't like it.  And why?  Because it's too close.  

Too honest.  Too raw.  I feel sometimes like I distract people with enough things that aren't me in a song so that I can drown them in the underlying truth that is all me.

NOTE:  It is midnight.  I am tired.  Pardon me, my three readers, for saying vague things and not explaining them.  If it's any consolation, I'm muddling just as much as you are.

But that's not just music.  You can also distract with words.  Humor, in particular.  It's like hiding the medicine in the peanut butter (I think of dogs as I say this); they eat it for the peanut butter, but they still get the benefits of the medicine.

Maybe we're too proud nowadays to accept that which we have not prepared ourselves for.  Maybe the problem with the spoken-word piece wasn't that it wasn't art.  Maybe it was that it was a different kind of art than we were prepared for.  

I'm more confused now than I was when I started, so maybe I should go to bed now.  It feels like anything else I could say would be too disconnected.

So long, 

Anna

18

Yesterday at church, I asked a small child (eleven years old or so) how old she thought I turned last week. 

"Um...fifteen?" she said. 

"No..." I replied.

She tilted her head to the side.  "Fourteen?"

The fact is, despite my youthful visage, I am eighteen years old as of last Tuesday.  Multiple people have asked me how it feels.  It feels quite a bit like being seventeen, except now I'm allowed to do all kinds of things that I have no interest in, like smoke, talk on the phone while I drive, and join the military.

Oh, and I can vote.  So that's fun.

A Clotted Mind

As usual, I'm starting this post with a general idea of what I want to talk about, but no real plan for how I'm going to accomplish it.  I'll talk myself through it and never doubt that I'll end up, perhaps not where I thought I'd end up, but where I'm content to be.

I'm not sure what my words sound like to you, but to me they're set to the sounds of Gert Taberner radio on Spotify.  This morning, when it was warming up and the world outside was crisp and fresh, I listened to Jewel and baked waffles.  Last night, through a chance comment of mine, I went to the movie theater with people I know and love and watched Avengers: Endgame.

I know this sounds random and discombobulated right now.  But there is a point.

I finished my last high school classes last week.  (That's not the point either.)

I see it beginning to take shape now.  Two halves.

The First Half: Am I Not Entertained?

No.  Not especially.

Sometime recently, I began to notice changes in how I consume art.  Books, movies, music, all of it.  It used to be, I read as a reader.  I watched as a watcher.  I listened as a listener.  Now, when I read, when I watch, when I listen, I do it all as a writer.

I hardly know how it happened.  Once upon a time, I laughed at the jokes and let them be.  Now, even as I laugh, I ask questions.  "What does that joke say about this character at this point in the story?  What does it set him up to say later?"

I suspect the things that I catch are the same things that have always caught me.  But now, I'm conscious, and these things fill my head.  I don't let them simmer on the back burner.  I hover over the pots, I tinker with the recipes, I add a dash of this, a sprinkle of that, hoping perhaps this batch will be edible, perhaps someday I can make it for more than myself.

That's intention.  That's purpose.

So don't think I can't enjoy art anymore.  To the contrary, it now has much more potent meaning for me.  There's a sharp joy in thinking, "Ah, I understand what she did there!  Look how clever that is."

It's much more important than that though.  It's not just the tricks, the little turns that help accomplish the purpose.

It's the purpose itself.  It's looking at a story and brushing aside the the distractions; technique, style, the words themselves, all that can be done away with.  And it's saying, what is the soul of this story?  What is its essence?  If I can do that, if I can look at the vulnerable heart of the story, I can start adding those things back in, because now they're not distractions; they're the vehicle.  They're how the author gets that soul from their head and heart to ours.

I am learning to learn from the examples of others.

The Second Half: Entertaining Myself

I got a smartphone a few months ago, even though I hate the very thought of it.  Unfortunately, there's an app I need for work, and my family wants a way to communicate with me, and it's not practical to carry a flip phone and an iPod everywhere I go.  So I consolidated.

But while it reduces the amount of stuff I carry on me, it seems to multiply the amount of stuff I put into my head.  And when I'm consuming, I'm not producing.

I had been thinking until the other day, "I'm learning to learn from what I consume.  Consumption is good because now I can use this stuff."  But to my frustration, I wasn't using it.  My writing ideas, captured in snippets and seconds, were growing.  But I wasn't sitting down and writing.  I would think about it, but somehow I would stare at the page, then either pick up a book and read or watch a show.

Inspiration comes and goes.  The greatest impediment to writers has never been a lack of inspiration, but a lack of discipline.  

I could feel the ideas, ready to be developed if only I would put in the time.  "You have to write before you feel ready," I told myself.  "There's no way to get better unless you do it.  Taste the darn thing, Anna.  Just see what it's like."

Still.  Still I consumed, and produced nothing but a couple songs in as many months and a few half-baked characters.

Then one day, I turned off the radio when I was driving.

The silence was beautiful.

My scattered, chaotic, unsorted thoughts slowly filtered and began to put themselves in order.  Characters that had been hiding in the background until I was ready to meet them again stood up and asked me who they were.  I began to answer.

I filled the silence.

I can't believe that I didn't know.  I think now, I should have known.

I pride myself on knowing how my mind works.  I know how easily I get overstimulated.  I know how important writing is to my emotional stability.  Yet I had been cluttering my head with processed imagination and letting it stagnate.  It was tangled.  It was clotted.

What's more, I was already overstimulated from the sheer amount of people that my job requires me to interact with, and adding to that could only end negatively.

The fact is, I believe my writing has decreased in quality.  Big picture stuff has improved.  I have a better eye for plotting, and I think my character development is on the road to somewhere really nice.  I have a better grasp on abstract concepts than I ever have before, and I'm recognizing the importance of making people not only do conflicting things, but having themselves conflicting personalities.  The problem is the words themselves.  There's a lack of taste and grace that I see in every prose piece I write.  I wrestle the words into shapes that I hope, rather than believe, represent the soul of the story, and those words fight me all the way.  

It was not always this hard.  It's like going out to lunch with an old friend and realizing, no, you're not friends anymore.  And why?  What's causing this disconnect?  

There are two reasons.  First, I don't read on the same level that I used to.  For years, I read books every day that challenged and grew my vocabulary, and left me more competent with the English language in general.  There's a big difference between juvenile and young adult fiction.  Juvenile, for the most part, tends to build up ideas and reinforce healthy concepts that children have heard before.  The lines are clearly drawn, and the good guy wins.  YA is a whole different ballgame.  It seeks to challenge.  It wants readers to look at their long-held ideals and examine them anew.  To call a YA book "unsettling" is a compliment, not a complaint.  And in order to do this, YA authors like to strip it down to the basics.  It's not someone else talking down to the reader, it's almost a mirror of the reader, talking to himself.  It defeats the purpose for new words to be introduced; that's distracting when all that matters is the battle of concepts.  I believe if I read less YA and more classics, I would be a more competent writer.

The second reason is that I don't write enough.  The only things I've ever really learned, I learned by doing.  It takes me years to become good friends with a person, and those years are not easy ones.  But the more I interact with them, the more I test their limits and their proclivities, the faster I learn who they are and how our friendship can be most rewarding.  I must write if I want to know how to write.

I strongly suspect that this is not an easy blog post to read.  I think it's vague, and not tied together all too well, and the sentence structure is probably repetitive.  But that's the point.  I have to start somewhere.

The Conclusion: Horizon

Things have cleared up a little.  There's still far too much in my head and far too little on the page.  But I have some idea of where to go.  

Keeping the radio off can only do so much.  I need to have a better hold grasp on how much art consumption is too much, and then I need to put my phone in its drawer and start grinding out these words.  I'm toying with the idea of a completely entertainment-free week.  Because that's really the key takeaway from this post: when there's a gap in my entertainment, I can and will supply it for myself.

If I can be honest, I'm really not liking this post, but I spent over two hours writing it and it's almost midnight and I have work tomorrow.  

In everything I write, I try to distill it to the soul of the story and the characters.  Well, this is me, scattered and stumbling, but still going forward.  Take it for what you will.

Goodnight and so long,

Anna

Winter Music for the Masses

It's cold out there, folks!  When it's cold, I like to listen to music.  I also like to listen to music when it's hot, or when the temperature is not significant in any way.

I've tried half a dozen different ways to preface this list, but I'm just going to have to go with a lame: here are some nice cold-weather and Christmas tunes, some of them just songs that I like, some new releases.


Chase Holfelder has been one of my favorite YouTube dudes for a while (he also happens to be from NC), and he just made a cover of Winter Song, originally by Sara Bareilles and Ingrid Michaelson.  Pretty simple production, beautiful song, and nice vocals as always.

Josh Groban's got his February Song.  That man can sing.

For those with winter depression, listen to Grey by Cody Jinks.  It's not strictly a winter song, but I feel like it applies.

I don't even know how to describe Avalanches by A Fine Frenzy.  Alison Sudol always leaves me a little unsettled.  Her approach to music perfectly balances the lyrics and the production, and both are strong, yet understated.  Definitely worth a listen.

Over You by Miranda Lambert covers grieving someone through the holiday season and beyond.  It sounds really sad, and it is, but that's probably why it's so good.  It was written by Blake Shelton and Lambert, and is about Shelton's brother.  Obviously, this was before Blake and Miranda divorced.  So now there's another thing to mourn.

Being unable to think of anymore simple winter songs that I want to recommend to you, let's move on to the Christmas music.

Citizen Shade, also from NC, and also some of my favorite YouTube dudes, just put out a cover of This Christmas with Kierre.  If you haven't heard anything of theirs, it's worth listening to just to hear Will's voice.

A few years ago, Chase Holfelder and Kurt Hugo Schneider collaborated on a minor key cover of All I Want For Christmas.  Minor key covers are kind of what Chase is known for, and KHS is a music producer and filmmaker who routinely produces YouTube covers of popular songs with YouTube artists.  He's also worked with people like Rachel Platten, Natasha Bedingfield, Hunter Hayes, and others.  Pretty brilliant dude, actually.  He went to Yale and majored in Mathematics.

In October, Aaron Watson released An Aaron Watson Family Christmas, which is a great country album.  Funnily enough, earlier on the day that I listened to this album, I had been trying to find a really good cover of A Christmas Waltz, and I hadn't been able to find anything that really tickled my fancy.  Then I had this album playing in the background, and I heard that song!  And it was perfect!  It was a joy to find an old 50's song translated so well into the country language.  Another treasure of a song is She Stared at Him All Night, which sounds really creepy, but actually its only flaw is historical inaccuracy and some vaguely off theology.  Aaron Watson didn't write it, but he really does it justice.  As the title suggests, his family is heavily featured on this album, and it's very fun to listen to.

I haven't listened to Blake Shelton's Cheers, It's Christmas album all the way through, but Kelly Clarkson helps him on a great rendition of There's a New Kid in Town, which was originally written by Keith Whitley, and has become a country Christmas classic (look at all that alliteration).  Blake Shelton, despite some of his 2014 and 2016 song choices, can really sing.  And, as a bonus that I just discovered, this album includes a duet, with Michael Buble, of Home, with more Christmas-y lyrics.

If you're in the mood for some bluegrass, Doyle Lawson and Quicksilver have a great a capella medley: The First Noel/It Came Upon a Midnight Clear/Joy to the World.  The harmonies in The First Noel alone make this a great song.  Seriously, they're gorgeous.

Speaking of a capella, Pentatonix's That's Christmas to Me has some good picks, including a very peaceful, late-night suitable cover of Silent Night.  PTX has FOUR Christmas albums.  I have listened to only one.  I assume they have some other good Christmas songs though.  I mean, with four albums, they've got to...

I love Auld Lang Syne.  Unfortunately, I haven't found any version of it that I feel a desperate need to recommend.  I'm always on the lookout for one, though, so if you find it, please tell me.

So long, and Merry Christmas.
Anna