15/22 - I Swept The Marble Chambers

As promised, here's the second part of Petter's holiday Top 5(/10)! Christmassy non-Christmas songs, this time with a secular hymnal quality, as it's Christmas eve here.

 

 

Koreless - Strangers

Starting withh a wordless overture, setting a sparkly, crispy cold atmosphere. But turn up the volume and allow yourself to be enfolded, and you'll notice that here hides a whole carefully orchestrated symphony of glitchy chimes and vocal fragments.

 

 

Leonard Cohen - You Have Loved Enough

Christmas music has a tendency to descend into schmaltzy sentimentality, so why not take the opportunity to instead listen to Leonard, who in his early 00s output dug down into that schmaltz to again raise it up to the finest art. Great songwriting can remedy and purify the most overladen production...

 

 

Tarta Relena - Figues

Harking back to one of the best gigs of 2022: the moment these two women suddenly sung the first few lines of Björk's Lionsong I had goosebumps all over and tears in my eyes. And now, this track still works its magic, like pure winter light on my face.

Anouar Brahem - C'est Ailleurs

Been listening to this album on the early morning bus to work quite a few times and this searching, twinkling melody always gets me. "It is elsewhere", indeed!

 

Sigur Rós - Dauðalogn

Feeling sacred yet?

Inside I think
Forest lights reveal a fire
One with myself
Now I sit with steady land underfoot
The morning appears
With its calm against the storm
And now the surface ripples
And now we break the dead calm

 

Peace on earth and holiday presents to all, except the rightwingers!