The Beach Boys and The Monkees - two Christmas albums to play this holiday season

There’s so many ways to go any given Christmas season these days - from the old-fashioned ‘classics’ to blues, soul or punk and heavy metal, whatever suits the ear of the beholder and whatever brings them joy (or melancholy) suited for the holiday season.

Yet, very often, it is those albums that are anywhere on the line between pop and rock that often seem most suitable to the jaded (or not so jaded) ears of music fans that turn out to hit both the feel and the mood of Christmas and winter holidays season.

There, possibly two albums hit the mark - The 1964 Christmas Album by The Beach Boys, and another by another sixties band that was formally their last Christmas Party by The Monkees from 2018.

The Beach Boys’ Christmas Album comes from the band’s prime surf’n’drag era, combining five Brian Wilson originals and seven Christmas classics.

Wilson’s originals are exactly in the vein of the sound The Beach Boys were excelling at the time - brilliant, sublime harmonies over the immaculate backing, that could have had a place on any other Beach Boys album of that period.

The Beach Boys tribute to a favorite band

The seven classics were in a way Wilson’s tribute to his all-time favorite vocal band, The Four Freshmen, as the wide screen orchestral arrangements were handled by Dick Reynolds who was The Four Freshmen arranger.

Still, the album has that ebb and flow of both The Beach Boys sound and the Christmas feel any good holiday album needs to have. People are also still covering their Christmas songs!

The Monkees spread holiday cheer

On the other hand, The Monkees’ Christmas Party is a somewhat strange affair. It turned out to be The Monkees last official release (2018). It actually includes freshly recorded tracks at the time, as well as those from 1967, 176, and 1991.

At the time, Davy Jones has already passed, with two of his posthumous contributions included. Again, it is a combination of tracks written for the album (including those by XTC’s Andy Partridge and Weezer’s River Cuomo), as well s an excellent rendition of Big Star’s “Jesus Christ.”

While on paper it all sounds as a disparate hodgepodge, the album has exactly that holiday feel any good (pop/rock) holiday album needs. The Monkees still receive recognition, with the band recently earning the New England Music Hall of Fame Award.