With just mere days until the holidays, I can’t let the latest from Smoke Fairies go without a notice. Their new album, Wild Winter, is a holiday album set with one small difference than most holiday sets. The difference is that the whole album are freshly crafted Smoke Fairies tunes rather than even a mix of traditional tunes. All of the album’s ten songs are completely new tracks.
Wild Winter holds true to the sound honed by the duo. As I go through the entire album, one thing stands out is that these songs feel great. And while each song is locked behind the veneer of being a holiday tune, they end up doing much more than that. That’s fine with me as we never have a shortage of holiday tracks from many other artists.
With this in mind, it’s joyous to appreciate Wild Winter as if it were an intended new set and NOT holiday motivated. Nevertheless, great tracks like “Circles In The Snow” showcase the beauty of the holidays in a laid-back folk setting. It is haunting in the usual Smoke Fairies way. The same can be said about the title track, and one further sequenced down, “Snowglobe Blizzard”.
What Wild Winter is showing us is that Smoke Fairies are maturing further as a band. The songs are tidy, strong, beautiful, and quite easy to listen to. So, instead of me thinking that this is an intended holiday set, I simply view it as a gift from a band that is too good for you not to notice.
Release Date: December 09, 2014
Label: Rough Trade Records
Website – Official
Availability: (CD, DD)
–Matt Rowe
Mine arrived on Monday and I also think of it as a new album in general rather than a holiday or Christmas album.
It is definitely dark and mystical, and could apply to any time of year that is dark and mystical, like winter can be! I agree – it is a new SF album and folks shouldn’t avoid it if they are thinking it is simply a Holiday offering. I liked the added guitarist too – gave a bit more edge to the proceedings on some tracks, as if they needed more edge.
Thanks for the heads up about this album being limited (1000 on vinyl, 1500 on CD). The album is quite pleasurable. I agree with Tom M, it hardly feels like an album to limit playing around the holidays.