Non-smaltzy Holiday music
Andrew R. Briggs | ...in the fair and distant state of Oregon | 09/15/2007
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Imagine it's 1934, christmas eve, and you're doing your last-minute holiday shopping. The sales staff is exhausted and want you to go home, and you are exhausted and want to go home but have more shopping to do.
That's when you hear it ~the music drifting up from the main lobby, and you follow the sound.
The Brother's Figaro would be the band brought in by store management for christmas cheer. Dispassionate, professional, clean, with a sound that evokes tinny speakers and different cadences ~ to my ear, 1930's and a Jimmy Cagney swagger. It's as if they're singing songs of Christmas knowing the soup-line starts outside.
And this may be an acquired taste, but I find these covers of Christmas classics refreshing - songs I've heard repeatedly as background noise hundreds of times ~ yet this time, I listen. I don't want to sing along ~ I want to figure out who's doing the singing."