VARIOUS ARTISTS / Have Yourself a Meaty Little Christmas (2009)

Meatwad is somehow able to afford the studio time necessary to make a Christmas album and his perfect balance of naivety and inanity indeed makes for a savory flavor of Christmas subversion when paired with Master Shake’s outright blasphemy. Frylock doesn’t try particularly hard to reign them in and that’s all for the better. Boxxy Brown is the only cast member who gets to contribute outside of the main four and while disappointing it does lend focus when paired with the stated rationale for the endeavor.

This both turns the holiday on its ear and delivers about three episodes worth of the show’s delightfully absurdist content. It’s so much of what Mr. Hankey’s Christmas Classics isn’t.

Songs of Note: Feliz Navidad; I Sure Hope I Don’t Have to Beat Your Ass This Christmas

4½ Elf Boogies out of 5

VARIOUS ARTISTS / Mr. Hankey's Christmas Classics (1999)

I’m no great fan of Christmas and albums that go well out of their way to subvert it are unsurprisingly something I can get behind. Still, much like South Park itself, I’ve found myself liking this far less over the years. The price of hyper topicality is an abbreviated shelf life if that tightrope isn’t tread very carefully. I tend to enjoy the less pointed songs here, as a result.

Am I going soft? No. It’s simply that pitchfork waving isn’t enough on its own, anymore. I need there to be enjoyable substance related to the property in question when I look behind the torchlight.

Songs of Note: Christmas Time in Hell; Swiss Colony Beef Log

2 Summer Sausages Eaten Like Henry VIII out of 5

FOUNTAINS OF WAYNE / Welcome Interstate Managers (2003)

Chris Collingwood and Adam Schlesinger are capable of writing lyrics that span the universe in terms of tone and focus. This is a gigantic melange of power pop that manages to phase rapidly between being heartfelt, heartbreaking, fist-pumping, lackadaisical, introspective, absurdist, nonsensical (yes there is a difference), and cheekily perverted. Is it any wonder one of them wrote and produced for Josie and the Pussycats?

Required listening for those who have a stomach for the genre and a sense of humor buoying their spirit.

Songs of Note: Valley Winter Song; Little Red Light

5 Things Far More Valuable Than Corporate Conformity out of 5

DAVE MATTHEWS BAND / Everyday (2001)

Near the turn of the millennium, DMB scrapped a safer, more generic album’s worth of material in favor of this release and their fanbase essentially revolted, pressuring them into eventually releasing that more-of-the-same drivel. This is far leaner and funkier. More rewarding. There’s a perverse brazenness to the grooves and lyrics that even managed to attract the Wachowski's attention. There is a dollop of hippie pap right at the end but it doesn’t dilute the sincere questioning and lamentation that the well-tread subject matter defining their collective agenda is afforded across the disc. Indeed, this has always been a consistently surprising and engaging experience for me.

Songs of Note: If I Had It All; Mother Father

4 Exotically Percolating Realizations out of 5