It's Christmas, Joe

Though I'm only halfway through reviewing the six non-winner albums for this year's Record Club holiday celebrations, I can say now that It's Christmas is probably a good bet on being the best one I review. If it is, it would be by default, but still. It's pretty good. It's unassuming. It doesn't try to be anything other than what it is—horn-power funk music that is slightly behind-the-times but still enjoyable. I'll take Christmas music in that vein. Better than the fucking over-sung ballads, anyway.

Have I ever even heard of Tower of Power? This is a question I asked myself when Brianna chose one of their songs in August. I guess so! "Tower of power" sounds like a phrase that your run-of-the-mill brass-involved funk outfit might use to describe themselves. Maybe I thought it was just a generic phrase and not an actual band. Maybe the phrase comes from the band? I don't know. Regardless, they exist. They still exist, as evidenced by this brand-new Christmas album.

A brief glance over the band's Wikipedia page offers some hints that this is a workingman's band, comprised of music industry lifers, whose taste of fame mostly comes with collaborations with more famous artists who require a little more oomph in their sound and want to find it in the soulful sounds of the band's horns and chicken-scratch guitar and nice groovy rhythms and all those other intangibles. Basically any rock outfit that survived the '80s can be found in the "Collaborations" drop-down on the Wiki.

Now, because they are so willing to adapt to other styles, that means that, when left to their own devices, the style might be lacking in individuality. This is any nondescript '80s funk band at the corporate gig. This is the opening credits to the most average 1980s rom-com you've ever seen. This is the music played in December at the one Sears that's left in your city. It's not good, it's not bad, it's basically nothing. "Muzak" is a term I learned from Sunny using it on this blog; this is about as close to muzak as I'll tolerate.

I will literally never think about this album again for the rest of my life. There's a chance I'll hear it again, of course, maybe out in the wild, but if I do, I'll never know, so generic is it. As sad as this sound, I actually think I'd prefer generic over the noxious fake-cheer bullshit from established artists any time of the year, and especially around Christmas. I'm tired.

GRADE: 2.5 pukes out of 5