Three Litre - I Hate Christmas

There's a slightly different take on seasonal hate in this re-release Christmas single from Reading's Three Litres. "It's not the crass commercialisation" - it's the fact that every Christmas an old flame returns to the singer's hometown and brings all the old, bad memories flooding back. This sentiment comes in the form of a storming indie-pop song with just the right amount of sneer in it, the jaded words balanced by the use of very seasonal bells (both sleigh and church) in the melody. Any Christmas song
which contains the lyric "I got my red nose from the grape and the grain, deer/But I'm down to a bottle a day" gets my vote, and the anthemic tuneful sing-a-long chant of I Hate Christmas strikes me as just the thing to stick on the stereo after the inevitable turkey gorge-fest.

B-sides are provided by the jump around, bouncing bass of Lost in the Country, an ode to the hazards of taking the wrong junction on the motorway,
and the Pebble Song, a soft, contemplative number(except for the sudden crashings of cymbals at unexpected, make-you-jump points) about wanting that which you can't find. If you must buy a Christmas song, don't make it Band Aid - buy this instead. If conscience bites you can always just give the price of a single(or more) directly to charity, and thus both feel saintly and spare yourself the sickly-sweet stench of rockstar ego.

Bah, Humbug.