All I Want for Christmas is Darkness and Dread
December 2, 2018 7:57 PM   Subscribe

It's that time of year again, to share the clip of cybergoths raving to Christistmas music (related, previously). And this isn't dance-shaming the fact that goths can dance to anything around 160 BMP (The Verge), but a goofy intro to gothic music for winter holidays. Happy Gothmas! Top 10 Goth Christmas songs (Houston Press). Post-Punk dot com has more Christmas songs for Goths, while Darklinks provides Dark and Dreary Goth/ Industrial and Steampunk Songs for a Macabre Christmas Holiday Season. Or skip the descriptions and justifications for song selections and enjoy a YouTube playlist of 50 Gothic Christmas music tracks/ videos plus some bonus links to albums and compilations.
posted by filthy light thief (24 comments total) 40 users marked this as a favorite
 
possibly of interest.
posted by mwhybark at 8:06 PM on December 2, 2018 [3 favorites]


Cocteau Twins' version of "Frosty the Snowman" is the definitive rendition, one of those "Liz Fraser could sing the phone book" moments. On the other hand, I'm strangely antipathetic to their "Winter Wonderland" (but then, I don't think there is a good version of "Winter Wonderland").
posted by mykescipark at 8:26 PM on December 2, 2018 [7 favorites]


Always liked Love Spirals Downward's D'n'B version of Little Drummer Boy even if *cry cry* it was the last thing they ever recorded together, although Welcome Christmas always seems to make the Goth Christmas playlists.

I think the Cocteau Twins' rendition of Frosty the Snowman (which did make a bunch of these lists) is the definitive one. Their Winter Wonderland cover fails because face it, it's a vapid song. Frosty the Snowman on the other hand is goth as hell and the Cocteaus explode it on contact with the full force of their bittersweet way.

And do none of these lists really have Kate Bush's December Will Be Magic Again?
posted by lefty lucky cat at 8:29 PM on December 2, 2018 [4 favorites]


great minds, etc.
posted by lefty lucky cat at 8:33 PM on December 2, 2018


I will never forget hearing Liz' "Frosty" for the first time. I was in a retail district of my wife's Southern California hometown and literally thought I was experiencing an audio hallucination, because cool music by good musicians was strictkly forbad in such settings in the US circa the mid-nineties. It took me two years to see what canny 4AD had done. Good 4AD, carrying the fight to the front.
posted by mwhybark at 8:37 PM on December 2, 2018 [3 favorites]


Merzbow, Silent Night
posted by idiopath at 8:48 PM on December 2, 2018 [3 favorites]


It took me two years to see what canny 4AD had done. Good 4AD, carrying the fight to the front.

Well, the Cocteaux were off 4AD by that point - they had left for Fontana after Heaven or Las Vegas - but I still hear "Frosty" in the local chain drug store around L.A. every holiday season, and it always throws me off.
posted by mykescipark at 8:55 PM on December 2, 2018 [2 favorites]


hello and may i interest you in this metal-adjacent cover of "You're A Mean One, Mr Grinch" in the spirit of this gothmas season
posted by halation at 8:59 PM on December 2, 2018 [3 favorites]


hunh, good Cocteaux then. I have been operating under a twenty-year misapprehension that 4AD developed a Christmas album and that Frosty was among the tracks. I haven't been sufficiently motivated to adress the truth or untruth of this info in twenty years, it seems.

(ponders)

It's a thing I heard a long time ago. I liked, and still like, the idea that 4AD developed, recorded, and released a US-oriented holiday LP. I would not be surprised to learn I was wrong. I would be a bit disappointed.
posted by mwhybark at 9:20 PM on December 2, 2018 [1 favorite]




The entire Trans Siberia Orchestra experience is about wizards and space-ships fighting through an army of flying demons so Santa can come this year. And just as it looks like they're going to lose, the Manheim Steamroller comes out of nowhere like a righteous holiday-themed steamroller to blaze a path through!

Goths get it on the chin more than even the Furries do. If there's anyone I'd rely on to save Christmas from the forces of darkness, the athletic, co-ordinated ones with the gas-masks? Yeah. Watch your ass, Grinch.
posted by Slap*Happy at 10:25 PM on December 2, 2018 [5 favorites]


Lows Christmas EP is pretty awesome - Little Drummer Boy, Silent Night, Just Like Christmas for example
posted by phigmov at 11:08 PM on December 2, 2018 [1 favorite]


(error, edit window used to erase said error, which in constituent element is a base confusion between the Trans Siberian Orchestra and the Penguin Cafe Orchestra)

(I am a partizan of the bird one)
posted by mwhybark at 11:08 PM on December 2, 2018 [1 favorite]


The 1990s don't-call-us-goth label Projekt (whose demographic seemed to be people who found Dead Can Dance too mainstream) had a Christmas compilation one year. I had a copy back in Australia.
posted by acb at 1:00 AM on December 3, 2018 [3 favorites]


There's no shortage of oppressive seasonal dread in the track (Merry Xmas) Face the Future by BEAK>.
posted by misteraitch at 3:21 AM on December 3, 2018 [1 favorite]


Floss Xmas too - the young person thing.
posted by unliteral at 3:46 AM on December 3, 2018 [1 favorite]


I've always thought that Noël Nouvelet was pretty goth, as Christmas carols go.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 3:54 AM on December 3, 2018


Glad to see “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” a couple of times on that playlist. It’s well-suited to a dark treatment.

This post by Sara C. had a bunch of great links.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:15 AM on December 3, 2018 [2 favorites]


Korn's Christmas Song (yeah, maybe they're not technically Goth, but their lead singer used to be a coroner)
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 6:43 AM on December 3, 2018


Not "goth," exactly, but in a pensive key, Galaxie 500's cover of John and Yoko's "Listen, The Snow Is Falling" used to be standard on every holiday-themed mix I made.
posted by octobersurprise at 6:56 AM on December 3, 2018 [2 favorites]


oh my goth, Becky, this is awesome!
posted by supermedusa at 9:05 AM on December 3, 2018


Goth Girl in bright blue skirt really looks like she doesn't want to be ironic but actually dance.

Poor Goths - it's seriously okay to be deathly AND move your ass. Dance like no one is dying.
posted by Lipstick Thespian at 9:59 AM on December 3, 2018


From the "doom and gloom" perspective, perhaps the Appropriate Christmas mix I did a bunch of years ago might be relevant here? 2400 christmas songs mushed into/onto one track.
posted by monocultured at 10:39 AM on December 3, 2018 [1 favorite]


Nick Cave on "Goth"
posted by homunculus at 10:10 AM on December 12, 2018


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