REVIEW: Manahattan Transfer - The Christmas Album

"Snowfall" gently falls on my ears as the first song of this Manhattan Transfer seasonal disc tremelos through my speakers, washing me carefully, quietly, steadily into a blissful state of bloody, suicidal tendencies, though within the first 10 seconds I feel only the numbness that comes more quickly than it would with suicide - as if my wrists are already slashed and the blood is oozing out and trickling along the tiles of the bathroom as slow and as careful and as gentle as this first song.

After this first tune I found myself wishing for John Cage's "4'33"" - a musical composition on the piano where he holds his fingers above the keys and never touches them. In other words — sweet, sweet silence. Eternal if at all possible.

19 hours later and we're on song two - and we have a funeral of a Christmas theme going on even before Christ is born - with "Let it Snow. Let it Snow. Let it Snow."

Kill Me Now. Kill Me now. Kill Me Now.

As the songs continue to play, it isn't visions of sugar plums dancing in my head, but Matrix-moving bullets headed toward each other, toward my ears.

I make a call, a desperate plea, to the one person who may save me from myself - other than hitting the STOP button, of course.

"Mom? What do you like about Manhattan Transfer?"*

"I like their harmonies and their arrangements of familiar tunes. They do have a way with a tune, and with their delivery. The timing and musicianship is good. Too slow for the faster younger set?? Too bad. Great for the "boomers" :-) I play their music over and over. Do they have a new Christmas CD?"

Thanks Mom, you're a peach.

Article Author: Temple Stark

A graphic designing wordsmith, with a decade-plus career in community journalism behind me. Take a mean photo, have a new camera, and have been riding the wave of Twitter for more than a year.

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