Not another Christmas album I hear you cry? Well, this one's a bit different - aside from the cheesy Christmas songs we all love to listen to (you can't deny we all love a bit of Slade) we sometimes love to be hit in the face with traditional sounding Christmas melodies. Yknow, those one's that sound like they've come out of 1890's Ireland.
Thea Gilmore
But why do we like to listen to sad, downbeat Christmas songs so much around Christmas time? It's a question we should ask singer/song writer Thea Gilmore who has released seasonal album "Strange Communication."
Gaining praise from Bruce Springsteen, Joan Baez and Martha Wainwright is all just a day's work for Thea, who experiments with covers of Yoko Ono's, 'Listen, the snow is falling,' and Elvis Costello's 'The St Peters Day Murders,' on the album.
Anyone looking for a nostalgic Christmas has found it in the form of Thea's album - although it is not your average offering of the snow-and sleigh-bells-hurray-it's-Christmas seasonal collective.
Instead it is a stirring and emotive journey, with references to the poetry of T.S Eliot and Louis Macneice.
Oxford-born Thea said, "in revent years a few artistes I admire have released Christmas albums - notably Low and the McGarrigle sisters - and I've realised how much there is to write and sing about in winter."
The album does offer joyful and celebratory tunes as well as the captive festive ballads, it makes for a relaxing Christmas that can make your heart swell and undoubtedly be the soundtrack to many people's festive holidays, Merry Christmas!