Tinsel and Lights is a Christmas album by British singer Tracey Thorn (best known as the voice of Everything But the Girl) . It was released in October 2012 on Buzzin’ Fly Records and Merge Records. It is her fourth solo studio album.
The album mostly avoids canonical Christmas songs but instead features covers of songs by Sufjan Stevens, Joni Mitchell, Randy Newman, Ron Sexsmith and The White Stripes as well as self-penned songs. Scritti Politti’s Green Gartside features on a cover of Low’s “Taking Down the Tree”, as well as writing “Snow in Sun”. Ben Watt, who is Thorn’s husband and partner in Everything but the Girl, plays on most tracks, and their three children provide backing vocals on the track “Joy”.
They’re not all strictly Christmas songs,” Tracey Thorn said, “but if they mentioned winter or snow or even just being cold, that was good enough for me.” It should be good enough for you too, because on this lush 2012 release, Thorn reinvents the Christmas canon, drawing from sources as diverse as the White Stripes’ Elephant and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.
The most surprising thing about Tinsel and Lights might not be that it’s a Christmas album by Tracey Thorn, but that it manages to transcend its genre and the season it’s intended to soundtrack, perhaps because it forsakes any of the usual musical signifiers: you’ll search in vain for a hint of sleighbell. With a couple of judicious pokes of the fast-forward button, you can listen to it on a wet October afternoon when Christmas seems as far away as Neptune, without feeling suicidal as a result. Among the ranks of seasonal albums, that might well make it unique.
Tinsel and Lights entered the UK Album charts at number 94 on the 10 November 2012. An expanded version was released via iTunes. In addition to the original 12 tracks, it added “25th December” (originally performed by Ben Watt on EBTG’s “Amplified Heart” album) as well as acoustic versions of “Joy,” “River” and “Tinsel and Lights.”
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