For November’s Record of the Month we’re doing something we’ve never done before…selecting a Christmas album, but this isn’t like any other holiday album. This is John Fahey’s instrumental take on Christmas classics and strange, winter-time compositions that stretch the imagination of what makes a Christmas album. Let’s just say this isn’t your typical Christmas record…
Originally released in 1975 on the Takoma Records label, this was Fahey’s second album of Christmas-themed instrumentals. We prefer this volume over the first mainly for side B, which features the haunting and beautiful “Christmas Fantasy” parts 1 and 2–an original composition. In his Allmusic review, Jon Pruett wrote that the side-long instrumental “gives plenty of reason to search out this record. Here, [Fahey] dips into his characteristic, methodical plucking that flows from uneven to dizzying before lapsing into more melodic segments. Crashing and discordant at one moment, gentle and flowing the next. It’s not your typical Christmas fantasy and probably provided some nightmarish, surreal qualities to anyone hoping to inject some typical musical yuletide cheer into their holiday.”
Club members will be getting a copy of the beautiful vinyl reissue of Christmas with John Fahey.
