Two kinds of newness in a compilation
Jingle Bells, then Peace on Earth. Merge’s Snowed In, announced for November 13, opens by placing a familiar song beside a newly written one. That sequence gives the compilation its useful tension: a seasonal release can return listeners to known material while adding songs to the repertoire. Eleven participating artists need not supply the same kind of novelty. A composition and a new interpretation ask different things of a listener, even when both arrive as fresh recordings on the same album.[1]
The original songs therefore need their names: The Tubs contribute I Am an Elf, The New Pornographers supply Some Wings, and Superchunk offer Shortest Day of the Year. Alongside them sit Fruit Bats’ O! Holy Night and Elanor Moss’s interpretation of Judee Sill’s Jesus Was a Cross Maker. I read the sequence as room allocated both to songwriters and to interpreters. A new composition extends the available seasonal song list. A new reading places an existing composition before a different set of musicians, making comparison possible without requiring the song itself to be new.[1]
What the accompanying musicians change
Moss’s Jesus Was a Cross Maker places her voice with Kitba’s harp and Oli Deakin’s Wurlitzer. Those named forces give the interpretation a concrete starting point. Selecting somebody else’s composition leads into an arrangement decision through the instruments engaged to accompany it. For listeners, a possible comparison concerns the relationship between the voice and these two accompanying instruments within the same composition. To me, that choice of forces may offer a specific reason to return to a familiar work: how much space does each accompanying instrument receive? Answering that question directs attention to the interpreters as well as the composer.[1]
Rosali closes the album with The Cherry Tree Carol, joined by Lee and David Middleman on guitar and vocals. The opening Jingle Bells places Adrian Underhill’s piano and vibraphone beside Charlotte Cornfield’s guitar and percussion. These two ends of the sequence make the different accompanying forces concrete. Listeners can return to a known composition with other musicians and encounter newly written songs on the same release. What interests me is the different work assigned to interpreter and songwriter inside one seasonal album. One rearranges the space within an existing composition; the other adds a composition to the repertoire. Snowed In’s running order opens both kinds of work to a shared listening sequence.[1]