Modern Christmas customs revolve around more than just wry tweets about the John Lewis ad. According to Katherine Blamire and Jessica Davies, it’s a time to dismiss Yuletide frivolities; a time to lament the year gone by, with faces pressed against steamy windows and lips stained with mulled wine; a time to be ejected from the church service for being drunk. While there is sweetness (Bad Good defends the existence of Father Christmas) and strangeness (a cover of Captain Beefheart’s Steal Softly Thru Snow), Smoke Fairies resist the chintz of traditional festive sonics, instead using spectral guitars and sprawling desert-rock soundscapes. “We try and live in cities that we can’t afford, so take us back to the places where all our ideas were born,” goes the gloriously gloomy Circles in the Snow, while Christmas Without a Kiss – “Saving money so that we could buy a tree, but it turns out it’s just me” – is Wham!’s Last Christmas without the pomp of pop.
