****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
Keane lead singer Tom Chaplin has recorded a classic holiday album, not religious but definitely spiritual, reverential and haunting. The opener "Walking In the Air". conjures up images of spirits floating away from their bodies, free to fly unfettered. Chaplin's own "Midnight Mass" comes closest to a Christmas hymn, featuring a beautiful melody and background choir. "Come on all ye faithful friends, glory to the bitter end, we're coming up to midnight, sing alleluia".A recovering drug addict, Chaplin covers Chrissie Hyndes' tribute to a member of the Pretenders who died from an overdose. In "2000 Miles" a somber Chaplin sings, 'He's gone 2000 miles, the snow is falling down, gets colder day by day, I miss you"."Under a Million Lights"" addresses the state of the world head on, but refuses to give into despair. "It's easy to think we're screwed reading the front page news". The chorus of "turn your light on" swells insistently, concluding "we are a million lights, shining in the skies tonight." Joni Mitchell's "River" is included as well, with Chaplin's moody atmospherics adding to the song's sense of despair over a holiday breakup."London Lights", with its imagery of the London Eye, Albert Bridge, and Trafalgar Square lends a topical sense of geography to the proceedings. "For all the violence we've seen, for all the needless suffering, I don't need star studded skies, when I see the London lights reflected in your eyes.""Stay Another Day" and "Another Lonely Christmas" shine a light on the loneliness experienced by some during the Christmas season. "For The Lost" exhorts the listener to "bring your light, only bring your light, for the lost, for the lost, in our time.""Follow My Heart" is a joyful and wistful song sung to a lover. "Follow, I follow, I follow my heart, and come Christmas day I'll crash into your arms. When sorrow, when sorrow, would tear me apart, I look to my guiding star and follow and follow my heart.""Say Goodbye", the album's closer is an apology to a lover who has been wronged. "I've let you disappear into an empty sky, then looked the darkest part of me right in the eye. And still I wonder why, I can't find a way to say goodbye." The song, like many others on the album, manages to transcend Christmas and stands alone as a melodic slice of songwriting.My favorite song on the disc is "We Remember You This Christmas", with heart wrenching lyrics, "Faces locked in photographs, open windows to the past. If only I could step on through, go back there and be with you. To those we lost along the way, from those of us still here today, we remember you this Christmas."Chaplin has said in interviews that for his Christmas album, he wanted to create an album that would, "make up for all the Christmases I've ruined". Mission accomplished and then some!
