Song Review - Sufjan Stevens "That Was The Worst Christmas Ever!"

By Old Man

Both my father and I believe this is an incredible song. I have a remarkable Dad, he is one of those rare baby-boomers who has not simply stayed in the 60's and 70's classic rock, but has kept on listening to contemporary rock all the way through the present times. Do you know any 63 year old men who owned the new Modest Mouse album before you did?

Sufjan Stevens is one of the finest songwriters of Generation X. His Christmas album (now a few years old) is one of the few albums that does justice to the religious holidays, both of Christ's birth (through old hymns), western civilizations adoption of a whole conglomerations of winter rituals, and the events taking place at the holiday. Holiday albums rarely avoid kitchy remakes for a few bucks, but Stevens take on the holiday is serious and winsome, a celebration and an anticipation of mourning and joy, it is an emotionally real album about a holiday that is mired in escapism.

This song is about the latter - the events of a Christmas day. Whether it is fiction (he earned his MFA in creative writing from the New School in New York) or memoir, it is a touching story of a family that is disturbed from a father's violence during the holiday - the shoveling of snow, sledding, and then the burning of presents followed by the exodus of his sister to the playground. The contrast between the joy of Rie Munoz paintings, children at play in the snow, and the emotions that blow over amidst the reality of time that it is impossible to avoid during Christmas. We all know that Christmas is still sacred as a holiday in our culture, one that still provides an viable excuse for not working in our insistent culture. He opens with a yearning riff on his pet instrument (one of many) the banjo - an instrument that I can remember my father riffing on himself as I was a child, and the background of acoustic guitar and vocal harmonies.

Where does the emotion of this song lay? Music is a universal language, one that can cross all bridges as other languages cannot, and it is rare that the music and lyrics of a song are able to work together towards a true, honest, emotional end. Often pop songwriters play the music off the lyrics, writing opposites in order to create tension - but this song doesn't depend on that sort of display to create complexity - instead in its united simplicity it is able to provide an avenue to feel deeply hurt, joy, pain, and the nostalgia that we all feel in light of the marker of the season. It is impossible to avoid - and this song doesn't skirt it like so many others who treat it as an avenue for financial gain. Let's be honest - in our stoic culture, true felt emotion has found it's last stand, its Alamo, in the arts. And I am thankful for a song that enters into our feelings without the apology or reservation that even has infected affection's last stand - the embattled genre of emo.

"In time the snow will rise, in time the snow will rise / In time the Lord will rise, in time the Lord will rise"

I can't wait for Sufjan's next album. Until then, consider this as an early Christmas present option...