Holiday albums tend to throw their pitches straight down the middle. Wild Winter, a new holiday collection by the British band Smoke Fairies, takes a far more ambivalent view of the season. For one thing, it includes a Captain Beefheart song (and a knotty one at that). For another, the original tunes that make up the rest of the tracklist were all written and recorded during a scorching hot summer.
"But it was interesting, because writing about the winter seemed to come pretty naturally to us, regardless of what was happening outside," says singer Katherine Blamire. "There's so much to say about that time of year. It's an interesting combination — the way it was recorded, the time it was recorded, and the subject matter. I think it's produced something quite strange out of all of that."
Blamire and her bandmate Jessica Davies joined NPR's Scott Simon from London to discuss the making of Wild Winter and what they find uniquely compelling about the twilight days of the year. Hear more of their conversation at the audio link.
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