Snowflakes Christmas Singles Club: their new harvest

 

Is Snowflakes Christmas Singles Club from Amsterdam the only Christmas record label in the world? I think so. Please let us know if there are more labels like this. It specializes exclusively in 7-inch singles. For more than 10 years, Snowflakes has been releasing 1-4 white vinyl singles per year. As a result, we have written a lot about the label. For an overview, look here. Unfortunately, nothing was released in 2023. The label is making up for it this year with no less than four singles. The idea is that each artist comes up with their own song for the A-side. On the B-side, there is always a cover.

First band is Canadian based Holiday Crowd.They have a nice indie-sounding own song ‘Winterland’. On the B-side they chose to cover Dolly Parton’s Hard Candy Christmas.

 Les Pommes De Lune are also from Canada. They sing in French and their members played in bands such as Thee Gnostics, The Double Feature Creatures, The Saffron Sect or Les Séquelles. Musically inspired by the British Freakbeat scene of the late 1960s and the French Yéyé sound of the mid-1960s, Les Pommes De Lune have developed their own take on psychedelic rock. That’s what you hear on the very psychedelic A-side: ‘La Révolution Des Lutins' (The Elves' Revolution). On the flip you can find the Le Plus Fort, a cover of THIS track by yeye-girl Pussy Cat.

 The third single has jangle pop from Simon Chesterfield, member of the forty-year-old English band The Chesterfields. It’s the only single with a video. Their cover is of one of the absolute classics of British Christmas rock, Greg Lake's 1975 UK #2 hit 'I Believe In Father Christmas'. Personally I used to hate progrock like Emerson Lake & Palmer. But this version sounds less bombastic and very atmospheric.

'Wild Man' from the Nevada based Whatitdo Archive Group, is a very funky tune. But it has a strange subject: The myth of the Wild Man is a folktale that goes by many names: The Yeti of the Himalayas, the Bigfoot of North America, and, of course, Krampus of Eastern Europe—a yuletide beast with a reputation. Their version of ‘Greensleeves’ is jazzy and funky with some nice wah-wah guitars.