Track Listing

1. Little Drum Machine Boy - Beck
2. Christmas Time - Aimee Mann, Michael Penn
3. Santa Doesn't Cop Out on Dope - Sonic Youth
4. Christmas - The Posies
5. Millie Pulled a Pistol on Santa - The Roots
6. Merry Christmas, Baby - Southern Culture on the Skids
7. Christmas - Remy Zero
8. Gloria - Elastica
9. Christmas Is Quiet - Wild Colonials
10. Thanks for Christmas - XTC
11. Closing of the Year - Lisa, Wendy Melvoin, , , Wendy, Wendy
12. Amazing Grace - Ted Hawkins

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #119713 in Music
• Released on: 1996-10-29
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.com
Good cheer is in limited supply among alt-rockers, but Just Say Noel is a small, charming garland with a couple of solidly terrific originals: Beck's long, loony "The Little Drum Machine Boy" takes a few well-known lines and spirals off into a groovy stream of consciousness, and Elastica's "Gloria" is one of their finest rockers. There are some unexpected cover choices, too: the Roots do De La Soul's grim "Millie Pulled a Pistol on Santa," and Sonic Youth dig up Martin Mull's "Santa Doesn't Cop Out on Dope." Beyond that, the disc is split between warm renditions of well-known numbers and overproduced goop, but Ted Hawkins's deep, wrenching solo version of "Amazing Grace" shouldn't be missed. --Douglas Wolk

Customer Reviews

Much better than it sounds
Better than it has any right to be, this collection of unusual Xmas songs by Beck, Sonic Youth, Xtc and others puts the SPECIAL CHRISTMAS cd's for Special Olypmics to shame. Be forewarned, though--you need a sense of humor to appreciate these sometimes twisted Christmas songs.

Worst than a skiing holiday, better than socks
This was recommended to me by a friend with unusual taste in music and, given that, I wasn't suprised by the truly bizarre mix of tracks here. Its not consistently festive, conistently alternative, consistently good, or consistently anything else to be honest, but there are some gems buried here. The Beck opener is a solid track, not one of his best but no embaressment. The Sonic Youth track (a cover) is...interesting. Not one of their most tuneful, and thats saying something. The rest vary between cheesy 70s-style pop (XTC), mournful wrist-slitters (Remy Zero) and some delicately beautiful melodies (especially the dated but brilliant Posies number). Definitely worth a look if you can get it cheap, and a nice alternative to the usual Christmas suspects - just don't expect any miracles.

Merry Christmas, David Geffen!
This is another Christmas compilation album. It is an odd mixture of tunes. There are a couple of great songs; those being "Christmastime" by Aimee Mann & Michael Penn and "Thanks For Christmas" by XTC. Also notable is "The Little Drum Machine Boy" by Beck, which starts off well but runs too long at seven minutes length. The rest of the songs are not really anything special. Particularly bad is Wendy & Lisa's awful song from that awful movie Toys. But the good songs I mentioned save it from being a complete disaster.