Album: Chris Kamara - And a Happy New Year | reviews, news & interviews
Album: Chris Kamara - ...And a Happy New Year
Album: Chris Kamara - ...And a Happy New Year
Unlikely second Christmas cracker from genial pundit
Now this is exactly what I want for Christmas: a beloved fixture of Saturday afternoon TV putting a lounge jazz spin on some festive classics, backed by an 18-piece swing band.
With Rudolph, Frosty and the rest of the lowest-hanging festive fruit anchoring last year’s selection, this year’s combines your dad’s favourites – Wizzard, Elvis, Nat King Cole – with some lightweight carolling and even two new songs, written for Kammy by pop songwriters Richard Scott and Kelvin Andrews, co-writers of a chunk of Robbie Williams’s late ‘00s output. And while there are some missteps in the mix – Kammy’s budget Sinatra croon steamrolls “I Believe in Father Christmas”, Greg Lake’s 1975 anti-consumerist lament, into submission, and his swing-time “In The Bleak Midwinter” would make the cherubim and seraphim blush – there’s something tremendously endearing about this collection, particularly in a year when most of the extended family members Kammy’s enthusiastic performances bring to mind will likely be excluded from our state-sanctioned bubbles.
And nowhere is Kammy’s charm more apparent than on “Mr Claus”, the tongue-in-cheek letter to Santa that is one of his new additions to the Christmas canon. “I am appalled I doubted your existence from the age of five to 34,” he swoons, a lovelorn Casanova wishing his wife home after a lengthy absence, “I’ve been a good boy, as good as I can be”. Singalong classics, a Zoomed-in Roy Wood cameo and a slightly menacing refusal to get off the doorstep without some figgy pudding – there’s really something for everyone on this festive collection. It is, to steal a catchphrase, unbelievable.
Below: hear Kammy's Roy Wood-approved take on "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday"
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