A Song For Friday: Vines
A gentle entry into the Christmas season
Careful readers - and podcast listeners - will know that I’m a devotee of Cassie Wieland’s work, whether as a composer and collaborator in new music circles or as a singer, songwriter, and performer in her project Vines. After releasing several singles of cover songs in a featherweight style featuring her electronically processed vocals, she put out Birthday Party, the first Vines album of original material last summer.
But now she’s put out another cover song and it is exactly what we need, as the rest of the year collapses into the ever-more extended and omnipresent Christmas Season. While there have already been signs of its arrival, I feel the day after Thanksgiving is really the earliest acceptable day to allow it in. And what better way to welcome The Holidays than with this gossamer-light and dreamily melancholic interpretation of Vince Guaraldi’s Christmas Time Is Here? As originally released on the soundtrack to the 1965 TV special, A Charlie Brown Christmas, the song was already infused with an unusual sad-happiness, as if designed to make you nostalgic for the moment as you were living it. This is Cassie Wieland’s moment, however, and she captures that mood perfectly for our times. Listen and tell your friends if you agree.
Like Vines? Tell me about it!
From the archives:
Best Of 2019: Classical