| "Well Santa often seems so
sympathetic, but there's only so far that he will go. / He'll never really plainly see /
'cause he was raised a bourgeoisie / While we were out here freezing in the snow. / 'Stand
up! You're the working deer who make the world go round.' / That's what they told each
other all night through all night through./ 'Stand up! Raise your antlers now in
solidarity.' / You'll find that written there in the charter of Local 752."
- Arlo and Anna, "United Sleigh-Pullers Union 752." -
This image of Santa Claus as a union-busting
bourgeois capitalist represents local children's folksters Arlo and Anna at their folksy
best.
While Arlo Leach and Anna Belyav's new children's Christmas album, Holiday Mornings,
is not as consistently clever as their debut kid's record (1999's A Day at Honey Creek),
this old-timey labor anthems attests that the record is quite capable of keeping kids
laughing and entertained without boring the bejeebers out of their parents. The new CD is
laden with holiday gimmicks, and not just in the songwriting. The album can be purchased
either as one full-sized CD or as three stocking-stuffable mini CDs. (This does actually
work in any CD player).
Singer-songwriter Arlo Leach is still looking
for the perfect forum for his fun, quirky (if sometimes uneven) songwriting. He has
advanced a ways in terms of professional production since he released his first CD demos
after graduating from Grinnell College in Iowa in the mid-1990s and moving to Madison,
Wisconsin to work in computer programming. Those early CDs displayed endearing folk-pop
songs with a collegiate predilection for intellectual references ("Icarus,"
"John Cage: A Lullabye") but also a collegiate
who-cares-if-we-aren't-as-polished-as-the-big-leaguers attitude.After moving to Chicago,
Leach's albums have focused less on over-ambitious attempts at folkie sophistication and
more on his gift for humble folkie humor and clever meter and rhyme.
In the 2000 release Music of my Ancestors
Leach returned to grown up music but not to modern pop seriousness. This CD (on which
Leach hooked up with fellow Chicagoans like Jonathan Rundman and Mark Dvorak), applied his
folky cleverness to a set of songs modeled after Harry Smith's American Anthology of
Folk Music. Holiday Mornings continues that kind of traditional wit, with
evocations of pajama-clad kids watching TV on school holidays (the title track), a welcome
satire of over-decorated homes ("Too Many Lights"), a rare New Year's carol
("Making Resolutions: What's in it For Me?"), and a story that reveals Santa
Claus was once a cobbler in Pohjois-Savo ("The Shoemaker and the Elves").
There's also a subtly feminist ode to "Mrs. Claus," suggesting that were it not
for his wife's nagging Santa would probably blacklist most of the world's kids and watch
television instead.
Arlo and Anna steer almost entirely clear of
traditional Christmas favorites. Turns out, though, that "almost" is not enough.
The only non-original track is an off-key medley of Christmas carols called "Canon of
Carols." The CD's target audience (unlike me) will probably not be annoyed by the
chorus of too-cute children who sing a warbling round of the "Little Drummer
Boy." But things get worse when Arlo and Anna pipe in with other Christmas carols,
layered atop the round, trying to alter the melodies just enough to fit the key of
"Drummer Boy" but somehow managing to make both altered and unaltered notes fall
flat. But then the pair redeem themselves with songs like "United Sleigh-Pullers
Union 752." Leach's production is sometimes dull (bland 80s kiddie pop arrangements)
but more professional than the early records. This bodes well not only for future folksy
wit but also a day when Leach can live up to the ambitions of his early material.
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