Good Morning to you! You are reading the words of Jacob Braybrooke, and it’s time for you to decide upon all of your last-minute Christmas gift purchases straight after reading our latest installment of this year’s ‘Countdown To Christmas’ on One Track At A Time, not forgetting that it’s always my day-to-day pleasure to write up about a different piece of new music every day! ‘A Dreamer’s Holiday’ is a recent cover of the 1945 track of the same title that was originally performed by Perry Como, which the Tennessae-based 26-year-old indie rock singer songwriter Julien Baker released for a ‘Spotify Singles’ collection of Christmas covers by alternative artists in late 2020, exclusively issued for the conglomerate streaming platform – with Black Pumas, Jazmine Sullivan, Ruston Kelly and Dashboard Confessional also appearing on the extended play. Baker has recently re-uploaded the cover to her Bandcamp page, however, and so the 12 month exclusivity deal must have expired, meaning that it is now available to actually buy or download for the first time and it is technically a brand new release if you look at it one way. You may already know that Baker was a member of the Boygenius trio that has similarly launched the solo careers of Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus to the stratosphere in recent years, and Baker’s latest main release was ‘Little Oblivions’, an album that she released in February to solid acclaim and decent commercial success. On the record, she tackled the theme of underlying darkness inside the corners of her mind. Themes such as sobriety, heartache, relapse, failure and redemption were explored on the album, which was mixed by Craig Silvey (Florence & The Machine, The National, Arcade Fire) and engineered by Calvin Lauber, and she recorded it at home in Memphis. ‘A Dreamer’s Holiday’ has only been covered once before by Willie Nelson in 1983. Let’s hear Baker’s spin on the old formula below.
“I chose ‘A Dreamer’s Holiday’ because I found it incredibly unique as far as holiday songs are concerned. It’s a very understated song – both lyrically and musically; while it’s technically about a ‘holiday’, it doesn’t reference any specific holiday theme, it leaves the lyrics a bit more open-ended”, Julien Baker explained last year, adding, “It’s the same way with the music – the chord structure is complicated but surprisingly timeless to me even though the song itself is over 70 years old. It’s the kind of song whose arrangement can be re-imagined so many times, and I love the feeling of sonic potential a single like that gives me”, as she discusses how the task of tackling ‘A Dreamer’s Holiday’ could be considered a challenging one, but her own cover of the track passes off well due to her hard work and determination. The Tennessee native sets the mood with “Climb aboard a butterfly and take off on the breeze” for her daydream-like opening, using some vulnerable finger-style guitar playing before the gentle Horn section enters the picture, with Baker promising to “Make it a long vacation/Time, there’s plenty of” as her reverb-drenched vocal tones create some space for an inviting Piano solo to join the soundscape, with Baker encouraging us to “Help yourself to happiness/Close your eyes and concentrate” prior to the main musical hook of “You will feel terrific when you come down to earth/From a Dreamer’s Holiday” as the tight track draws to it’s natural conclusion. Although not mentioning ‘Christmas’ as a key concept, it feels suitable enough for the season. Baker’s vocals and laidback production provide a mellow quality to the original source material, while her minimalist take on the instrumentation and her tactile guitar melodies would still feel cohesive with the music found on her recent album ‘Little Oblivions’ as the track feels like a somewhat underground choice for a cover version. While the groundwork of the airy String-based scatterings and the subtle scratches of her crackling Vinyl production bears resemblance to her said latest album, sharing similarities with the style of her chronological music, it replaces the more morbid lyricism of that record with lyrics that are brighter. It never gets too excitable and Baker thankfully doesn’t feel the need to place some filler vocals or reach into the realms of a high pitch solo for this, and so I think the track is a good merger between the feelings of anticipation and longing that she wanted to portray. Really, it’s her vocal performance that gets the emphasis here, and she gives the track a relatively short duration so the themes don’t overstay their welcome. Overall, this was a lovely little cover that got the job done and Baker is a true musician having played all, or nearly all, of her instruments on this here track, with some newfound textures that were edited in her signature style. A sumptuous addition to your playlist.
‘Little Oblivions’ was previously a pick for ‘New Album Release Fridays’ on the site. We covered ‘Hardline’ here: https://onetrackatatime.home.blog/2021/02/26/new-album-release-friday-julien-baker-hardline/
That’s all for now! I’ll be taking my own ‘Dreamer’s Holiday’ tomorrow morning as Father Christmas himself will be spreading his share of seasonal cheer by introducing you to one of his favourite edgy hits for ‘Scuzz Sundays’. He’s told me to relay that it will be coming from a legendary Brooklyn native Synth Punk band whose leader is the co-founder of DFA Records. Their 2007 album ‘Sound Of Silver’ was listed as one of the 666 greatest albums of all time by KEXP listeners during a poll finished in 2019.
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