Modern Christmas carol renditions that aren't mediocre CCM?
'Tis the season, and it's nice to sit down and listen to some traditional Christmas carols in a cozy candle-lit room with plenty of biscuits. And sometimes it's nice to hear more modern takes on these ancient (and not so ancient) classics.
Unfortunately, whenever I look for this sort of thing, what I usually find is really bland CCM — some woman breathily singing "O Come All Ye Faithful" so slowly I can feel my life draining from me with every beat, a completely unnecessary modern bridge replete with painful key change, and so on. I know this stuff can be done right — Annie Lennox's Christmas album is a great example of taking classic carols and setting them to new music in such a way that it can completely change how you hear them. But finding more stuff in that vein is surprisingly hard.
So does anyone here have any suggestions or ideas for modern takes on classic carols that actually try and do something interesting?
English traditional folk artists could potentially be up your alley! Christian carols and folk music have a lot of overlap here, but they needn't be dreary. Kate Rusby is putting out a Christmas album this year. I saw her live in concert a couple of years ago, and she's such a delight. These go really traditional though, so there are a bunch of songs in there that you may not have heard of. Sometimes the tunes are familiar, or the lyrics seem to overlap with existing carols. But she's got a lovely voice, and the arrangements (at least in a live setting) are delightful.
Glad Christmas Comes by Eliza Carthy and Jon Boden is in heavy rotation for me at the moment. This album veers a lot more traditional, and that might not be to your taste. Solo vocal performances in the folk milieu can be... interesting. There's definitely a few tracks I'm less keen on on this album, but I cannot stop listening to The Good Doctor; it's so good!
Jon Boden also did a project a few years back called "A Folk Song A Day" in which he recorded and put out 365 folk songs. Most, if not all of December in that collection are Christmassy. The delivery is once again quite traditional, but I enjoy it a lot! I can't find a working link, but you might have some joy finding it on a streaming service.
Bonus recommendation: O Holy Night by Ben Caplan. It's a fabulous rendition of a traditional carol, and I love it. It's dark and moody and gravelly. It's very fun, give it a try :)
Looking into folk music is a great idea, you're right that there's a good amount of overlap and those are some great recommendations. And that O Holy Night is fantastic — just a completely different approach to the carol than you'd usually hear, but it works so well.
Ah Kate Rusby is fab. Saw her at the Sage. I often find myself playing Big Brave Bill when I want my mood lifting. Not very Christmassy though
Definitely not Christmas, but my favorite Kate Rugby song is the Drowned Lovers
If you haven't heard it before, give the album Deck the Halls, Bruise Your Hand a try. It's, admittedly, by a Christian band (Relient K), but it's fun in a 2000's pop-punk way and frequently stuck in my head as someone who doesn't really like Christmas music after a decade of retail holiday seasons.
Seconded, I've always appreciated the way Relient K went beyond the genre to channel the vocal harmonies of the Beach Boys, of all things. It's evident in some of that album. Christmas music aside, their regular stuff was occasionally excellent as well. I recommend the 2004 album Mmhmm which covers a lot of stylistic ground. Fun fact, the unnamed titular girl in the song "My Girl's Ex-Boyfriend" is believed to be Katy Perry, who was at the time dating Matt Thiessen as her early music career (as CCM pop singer Katy Hudson) intersected Relient K's. Obviously that was before she kissed a girl and flew to space with Jeff Bezos.
Pentatonix has a whole lot of Christmas Carols in their catalog, and being an acapella group, they have a lot of range in how they can present caroling classics in entirely new ways.
Came here to recommend Pentatonix. I can barely tolerate Christmas music, and Pentatonix is my go to when I have to play it.
This reply will not address your request very well. I'm just putting it out for anyone looking for something different in Christmas songs.
People are still writing and producing new songs for the Christmas season, and my favorite group, Mamamoo, has one they made back in 2016.
It is called Memory.
One of the members, Hwasa, also has a song called Grey Christmas.
Both of these are mostly in Korean, so I just lean back and enjoy their voices.
I’ll piggyback onto your comment with something that sounds entirely different, but with the same idea - it probably isn’t what OP is looking for, but maybe somebody else might enjoy it.
The metal band August Burns Red has put out two LPs (and a few random singles) of metal Christmas carol covers. They are almost entirely instrumental, so even if you don’t normally listen to metal, they are still really fun to listen to. Any vocals that do occur are singalong style, not aggressive/typical “metal vocals.”
Super fun to blast when cleaning up the house this time of year!
Sorry for the Spotify link, but a user put together all of their Christmas releases into one playlist so it’s an easy share: August Burns Red Christmas
I'm not quite sure how out there you mean when you talk about interesting and modern versions of carols, but one of my go to albums is Bela Fleck and the Flecktones' Jingle All the Way. Bela Fleck is a legendary banjo player, and they invited a tuvan throat singing ensemble to join. Needless to say, it's far from traditional, but I love the vibe.
If 80's/90's electronic Christmas music sounds interesting, check out Mannheim Steamroller. I don't love most Christmas music, but Mannheim Steamroller is pretty awesome, and they have a huge Christmas selection (most of their discography actually).
Straight No Chaser do an excellent 12 days of Christmas. I'm also partial to Residue, though this is a take on a traditional new year song by Waterson:Carthy from this album
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Heathens_and_the_Old_Green_Man
Which is one of my favourites to listen to at this time of year.
Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors have some christmas stuff that gets played a good bit in my house. They're an Americana band, so the best stuff is blues/gospel influenced with a healthy sprinkling of old Nashville. Their cover of Silent Night is decent, and I like their cover of Go Tell It on a Mountain. Some of their covers hew a bit too close to the swing roots of a lot of the christmas standards so those might now do it for you, but there are some decent takes in there.
I don’t think he ever turned it into a whole album, but my single favourite Christmas cover is “Little Drum n Bass Boy” by Andrew Huang (cover of Little Drummer Boy) and going back to it just now to find the link makes me realise it’s basically 15 years since he made it!
Anyway, it’s definitely a novel take on the song, and I love it so maybe you’d be interested too?
Highly recommend the band Low's Christmas EP. Some inspired covers and beautiful originals. My favorite is Just Like Christmas.
A few decades old but listen to the album “The Bells of Dublin” by the Dubliners for some good renditions of classic carols that are not the slow breathless versions you’re looking to avoid
I'm not sure if this maps at all to what you are looking for. It's a modern take only if you consider 1989 to be modern.
But I enjoy Carols Around the World by Quink Vocal Ensemble
This is an a capela group, and the album is a group of traditional carols from around the world. You should recognize quite a few of them but many of the arrangements are quite different than the originals. It's easy to preview it on youtube.
At the risk of looking ignorant, what is CCM? I only see Customer Communications Management from a quick Kagi search.
Contemporary Christian Music
I don’t have anything to add. But is the idea here that you want modern artists singing Christmas carols untouched? Like no change on the way they’re supposed to be sung.
Not really, I want to hear something different. But a lot of the stuff out there seems to come from the Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) scene, which has this really bland ultra-commercial quality to it that makes everything it touches turn incredibly trite and dull. It's like listening to that cover of Hallelujah by Pentatonix, but if that was literally their entire range and everything they ever did sounded mostly like their cover of a song that someone else sang better.
Oh dang I was off. I was thinking "Classic Christmas Music"
Ah yeah, sorry, I realised afterwards that that probably wasn't a very clear abbreviation unless you were familiar with the genre.
Sounds like the opposite, OP wants them to do something new with them
I read that but I listened to some of the album he gave as a reference and it sounded pretty traditional overall. He also said he didn’t want modern bridges and whatnot.
I recall about 20 years ago Clay Aiken put out a really solid Christmas album... looking it up it's Merry Christmas with Love from... 24 years ago. dear lord how the time flies
Anywho, that's a solid album, and last year I happened upon his channel right as he released Christmas Bells are Ringing! I seem to recall this one was nice, too. Not too bland, not too overdone. Enjoy!