Christmas albums were once the height of crass commercialism and cheese. She & Him, however, are the height of hipness featuring scene-stalwart M. Ward and indie darling Zooey Deschanel. They’re so hip if they ever got a hip replacement they’d be replacing their whole bodies.
They’re not the first hipsters to delve into yuletide cheer (Tori Amos and Sufjan Stevens had nice, listenable albums in the last few years). Nothing stays uncool forever. When something becomes very mainstream and unremarkable (Elvis and Johnny Cash did many Christmas records) it eventually becomes uncool and mainstream (Cliff Richard and Shakin Stevens did many Christmas records). Eventually the phenomenon becomes more obscure before fading away, becoming terminally unhip and crawling off to a charity shop to die.
Then, years later, a hipster goes into the charity shop and the phenomenon goes through a cycle of rehabilitation. Kitsch leads to ironic cool leads to post-ironic cool (when a love for something’s internal “itselfness” overpowers the hipster’s inner critic) and eventually simply “cool” (played at London Fashion Week) and people like M. Ward and Zooey Deschanel gravitate towards it like hips to an osteopath.
Anyway, the resulting record features a raft of Christmas covers with pleasant melodies and nice associations. It’s well put together but it’s hardly a labour of love. There are sweetly plucked acoustic guitars, piano melodies and rockabilly guitar twang which nicely counterpoint Deschanel’s laidback, unforced ‘50s actress voice. Overall, however, it’s probably a bit too laidback and unforced, with the choral backing vocals not quite reaching the complex harmonic heights of the records they’re pastiche-ing. I also suspect they’ve landed on the genre just as it’s turning from “cool” to “mainstream”. They’ll be in an M&S ad by December.