GONZALES, CHILLY - A Very Chilly Christmas (Sealed) (LP)

Christmas music is a highly peculiar genre, which has everything to offer from solemn festivity to exuberance. Christmas carols, loved and not further questioned, transport our emotions and memories, our gratitude and generosity. Performance Chilly Gonzales: The composer and showman in slippers and bathrobe does his craft with deepest devotion: he is an entertainer. That his modest contribution to this vocation would one day culminate in the following announcement was almost inevitable: Chilly Gonzales has made a Christmas album. From feudal oldies to the modern canon of Christmas hits, A very chilly christmas covers a wide range of seasonal moods and pieces. There is splendor and solemnity, austerity and cheerfulness - and Mariah Carey. With his blatant fidelity to melody, Gonzales skilfully maneuvers through the mythical, all-encompassing songbook of Christmas; in his selection of pieces, he chooses nuance over pomp. From We Three Kings to Wham, the great revelation of this album lies in the restrained, pure beauty of the interpretation in Gonzales' characteristic minor keys. A very chilly Christmas has its moment of glory in the title The Banister Bough, the only new composition of the album. The collaboration with Feist, decorated with tinsel and sweetened by the sugar fairy, is completed by an animated stop-motion video en miniature in the style of a Jean-Pierre Jeunet: The instructions for decorating the house for Christmas vary between capricious sensitivity and a hidden ecological message. The song wants to gently encourage us to rethink inherited and self-chosen traditions for future generations. Another highlight of the album is the cover of Snow Is Falling In Manhattan by David Berman, another Jew with a love of Christmas. Jarvis Cockers singing by the fire and Feist's glowing chorus nestling between Gonzales' piano and a flute. In this stop-motion video, Gonzales and Jarvis stroll through the snowy streets of Manhattan and watch the salting of the steps. Looking through a window at a crackling fireplace inside, they witness a stranger being invited inside.