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A Christmas Gift For You... Rare MP3's! What's New In 2007?

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A pleasant little record, Yuletunes: A Collection Of Alternative Pop Christmas Songs (1991) isn't quite the power pop slam dunk I imagined when I first heard about it. Released on the Shoes' Black Vinyl Records and featuring Shoe wunderkind Jeff Murphy throughout, Yuletunes sets a mood more congruent with an indolent Big Star ballad than a Raspberries rocker. While a few cuts work up a pretty good head of steam, most dwell on the melancholy aspects of the holiday season, and the music inevitably reflects it. That's not a bad thing, necessarily, but it casts a certain pall on the proceedings that prevents any one track from delivering a knockout punch - not even Material Issue, whom I all but worship. In the end, Yuletunes is a record for made for acolytes (like me) but which will leave the uninitiated supplicant mystified.