Zombie Christmas

Yesterday, wandering though Lane Crawford (Selfridges for those of us who can't afford to fly back to London from Hong Kong to do a bit of tasteful yet insanely OTT designer shopping) I spied a Christmas CD by Emmy The Great. It's incredible.

I'm not just saying that because there's a song on it called Zombie Christmas, but, well, there's a song on it called Zombie Christmas, which is note-perfect. It starts with the plinky plonk of a music box before the evil rising drone from the start of Resident Evil 4 bursts in, and then you've got a combination of Phil Spector style wall of sound, Kate Bush overblown vocals, and a bridge that sounds like an out-of-control ghost train, complete with a hurtling, whooshing reverb just before the zombies come down the chimney. In less than four minutes. I haven't even mentioned the awe-inspiring panache of a song about Christmas, on a Christmas album, where the chorus includes the words "I hate this time of year."

Why, it's better than Mariah Carey singing about what she wants for Christmas, and there's not many things that are better than that.

But better than that, it's not a godawful novelty record. Ok, there's a song called 'Jesus The Reindeer' that finishes things off (and has a rather different take on the names of Santa's animals) but there's also some really sweet, lovely Christmassy songs on there. Having dispatched a copy to my family for Christmas, it's fun to speculate if they'll listen to it while tucking into the turkey.

Of course, if anyone complains, I'll mail them the Aimee Mann Christmas album, which unless I remember very inaccurately, was about as festive as a kitten.

A kitten that has been wrapped up for a week in a box with no air holes, that is.