Description
We love the holidays! And that’s what inspired this album of holiday favorites by Flumergex.
This one was a really fun project, and that sense of joy shines through in the music. To date, this has also been the most popular Flumergex album by far, and we’re really pleased to have connected with people through the shared love of music.
Pagan Yuletide Carols, vol. 1 features a few reimagined versions of the Christmas carols you know and love, together with straightforward modern takes on some standard classics: well, as straightforward as we’re capable of, anyway; and it’s all blended together with our signature Flumergex dash of sass.
Wait, did you say “Pagan”?
Hello! We believe in tolerance and love, and we’re not here to argue. If the concept of this album offends you, we’re truly sorry for the inconvenience and we hope you can get back to doing something that you enjoy more.
Rise of the Pagans
For everyone else, the Flumergex album Pagan Yuletide Carols vol. 1 is an opportunity to bring your hug-a-tree, howl-at-the-moon, dance-around-the-Maypole, Universal-Love sensibilities to the winter holidays, which are a very important part of all our lives. It’s fun, it’s festive, it’s about family and old friends and traditions and our love for each other. The songs just happen to be selected and arranged from a perspective of something approaching neo-Paganism, of which Wicca is perhaps the best-known branch.
There’s a reason for that.
Jesse S. Smith, the guy who produced and performed all the tracks on this album, is also the author of the Basementia publication, Rise of the Pagans.
Smith loves the Pagan community and his many Pagan friends and family members, and this album is dedicated to them.
Song List
These are the carols on Pagan Yuletide Carols vol. 1:
Over the River and Through the Wood
When I listen to this dreamlike recording of “Over the River and Through the Wood” I imagine that I’m performing at a shopping mall with a kind of rinky-dink PA system set up next to the escalators, and all the shoppers are walking by and most of them are ignoring me;
but that’s okay because I’m just chillin’ out with this really relaxing super chill trap drum machine and the deep groove of that laid-back bass guitar and that totally wowzer envelope filtered electric guitar,
singing about how when you were a kid you would sit in the back seat of the car looking out the window at the countryside going by while your folks were driving the fam over to Grandma and Grandpa’s house for turkey and pumpkin pie, and now that you have kids you drive them to your folks’ or your spouse’s folks’ place for turkey and pumpkin pie, and it’s these traditions that give our lives a deeper sense of continuity and connection.
Music: Traditional.
Lyrics: Lydia Maria Child (1844).
O Family Come Gather
Then because we’re nothing if not eclectic, Flumergex shatters the calm with this raucous rock n’ roll reimagining of the Christmas carol classic, “God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen,” driven by that wailing wah-wah electric guitar sound played by a guy who was clearly inspired by Slash.
Smith’s alternative lyrics on “O Family Come Gather” emphasize the joys of gathering with family and loved ones to celebrate the Yule, by whatever name you prefer to call it. Our traditions bring us together, and that sense of togetherness is what we truly cherish about the holidays.
Music: Traditional.
Lyrics: Jesse S. Smith
O Solstice Night
It turns out, the Christmas carol “O Holy Night” began as a poem by one person, which another person set to music and changed the words; and then it was translated into English in the pre-Civil War era by a third person: an American Unitarian minister named John Sullivan Dwight; and he too modified the lyrics, this time to include a heartfelt call for the abolition of slavery.
Most recently, the gently updated lyrics of “O Solstice Night” by Flumergex evoke the universality of the human experience and the innate equality of all people, as well as a deep and abiding love for the beauty of Nature with a rousing chorus of “Call to the trees!”
Music: Adolphe Adam (1847).
Lyrics: Placide Cappeau, Adolphe Adam, John Sullivan Dwight, and Jesse S. Smith
Jingle Bells
Then it’s back to the hop, skipping down the shopping mall to the peppy happy Major key frolic of “Jingle Bells,” just the way you remember it; well, almost. This version has a bouncy electric guitar, and actual real jingle bells that traveled all the way here from Dublin, Ireland.
Also, there’s a super-secret surprise ending on this song. It’s so secret that you may have heard it already and not even noticed. You have to listen kind of close. All right, I’ll give you a hint. It’s something about Batman. He smells. At least, that’s what Joker says!
Anyway “Jingle Bells” is a fun short little timeless ditty about totally embarrassing yourself in front of someone who you really like.
Music and Lyrics by James Lord Pierpont (1857).
Down in Yon Forest
After that lightweight bit of fluff, Flumergex dives straight back into the heavy alternative rock sound: this time twisted with almost a bluesy swamp stomp swing. Just try to listen to this without bobbing your head or tapping your foot: we dare you!
Smith says, “When I was a kid my Mom used to play the Joan Baez Christmas album Noel every year for the holidays (along with John Denver’s Christmas album, of course, and also I had a tape of The Oak Ridge Boys, too)…” Ahem that guy does tend to go on and on and meander off topic. It’s a wonder anyone can stand him. Anyway according to Smith, that Joan Baez album from the 1960s is where he first heard the song, “Down In Yon Forest.”
It later turned out, as Smith discovered while researching the songs for this album, that “Down In Yon Forest” is one of the oldest surviving Christmas carols, composed in Medieval times when it would have been common to use a falcon for hunting. Some of the verses in some of the versions of this song have not only Arthurian echoes but also here and there some distinctly Pagan sounding overtones. It also turns out there are a number of different versions of this song, including distinct traditions from Derbyshire and North Carolina, apparently branching from the Medieval English Corpus Christi Carol (first transcribed in 1504 but possibly much older). After Smith learned about some alternate lyrics from Appalachia with a reference to a May Queen, he put together a sort of composite arrangement: and that’s what you hear here.
Also, this one rocks. Did we mention that?
Music and lyrics: Traditional and very, very old. At least half a millennium.
Arrangement: Jesse S. Smith
The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire)
This song has it all: family, Santa Claus, snow, Yuletide carols, and a recognition that you can say it in many ways and it still means the same thing: whether you say “Happy Solstice” or “Merry Christmas” or whatever words you prefer, it’s always the love that really matters.
This recording of “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire” is about as straightforward a cover version as Flumergex can muster. Which is to say, it’s maybe not quite a straightforward cover; but it’s at least adjacent to one. It’s pretty chill. We hope you’ll dig it.
Music and Lyrics by Mel Torme and Robert Wells. Of all the cover songs on this album (there are 8) this is the only one that’s still under copyright: and yes, of course we paid a licensing fee, what do we look like, Vikings?
So anyway by this time in the album we’ve gone from Thanksgiving through the Solstice and Christmas Eve and Christmas proper and Boxing Day, and you know what’s next… yes! It’s time for the big ball drop in Times Square on New Year’s Eve!
Auld Lang Syne
This is a song about old friends. We are grateful for the friends who are here with us in this moment; and we are also grateful for the friends who have maybe passed out of our lives, not because they’ve passed on from this world but just because they’re doing something else now, and that’s okay, but we still have fond memories of them and they’ll always be a part of our lives because they were part of our lives in the past. And we imagine that’s more or less what Robert Burns was feeling when he wrote this song based on what he described as merely a scrap, a fragment of an idea.
What is an “Auld Lang Syne” anyway?
The thing about Robert Burns, of course, the wonderful and frustrating thing, is that he made a point of writing out the lyrics of this song the way they sound when spoken in a Scottish brogue so thick it’s almost a different dialect of English; so naturally, by now most of us don’t know what he’s talking about with most of this.
Thankfully, Smith melodically sings the familiar lyrics of “Auld Lang Syne” in a more sort of West Coast news announcer type accent, so you’ll finally be able to figure out what this song was singing about for all these years! And when you finally hear what the song really means, you’ll love it even more, we’re sure.
Music and Lyrics: Robert Burns
Greensleeves
All right so technically “Greensleeves” is not a Yuletide carol, if you want to get technical about it. Technically “Greensleeves” is more of a Beltane holiday type song: Beltane being the cross-quarter day following the Vernal Equinox, of course, as all you good Pagans and other assorted Earth lovers already know. Point being, that’s the middle of Springtime, and this album is supposed to be part of a wintertime tradition. Please, don’t sue us. It’s all in good fun.
See, the thing is, the melody for the traditional wooing favorite “Greensleeves” was reused for the popular Christmas carol, “What Child Is This?” But this being a different sort of holiday album, Flumergex chose to perform the original version of the song, instead. The lyrics might be a teensie bit suggestive if you listen too close, but people have been singing this song for several centuries and we’ll wager folks will be singing it for several centuries more because getting spurned is something that happens to most of us eventually at some point.
In addition to the acoustic guitar, Jesse also played a borrowed mandolin on this song, which really accentuates that Elizabethan minstrel kind of sound that you hear on the recording.
Music and Lyrics: Traditional
About Flumergex
All songs performed by Flumergex, obviously. “Flumergex” is what happens when you merge within a state of flux, or so they say: apparently the band name is supposed to give an impression of change, or something like that. Although past Flumergex projects have featured a number of collaborations with other musicians, apparently the band is mostly just one dude these days, his name is Jesse S. Smith, I heard a rumor that he’s crazy but you can’t believe everything you hear.
