01. THE GIFT OF ST. CECILIA 02. WONDERFUL CHRISTMASTIME 03. LOVE CAME DOWN AT CHRISTMAS 04. O, LITTLE TOWN OF BETHLEHEM 05. HIBERNATION DAY 06. WINTER SKIN 07. PEACE IS HERE 08. GOD REST YE, MERRY GENTLEMEN 09. EVERGREEN 10. CHRISTMASTIME IS HERE 11. DRUMMER BOY 12. GABRIEL'S MESSAGE 13. IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER 14. I HEARD THE BELLS ON CHRISTMAS DAY
Item Specifications...
Record Label Gray Matters
Dimensions: Length: 5.05" Width: 5.59" Height: 0.4" Weight: 0.2 lbs.
Binding CD
Release Date Oct 16, 2007
Publisher PROVIDENT CHRISTMAS #58
ISBN 0012461105 EAN 0067003072526 UPC 067003072526
Availability 3 units. Availability accurate as of May 27, 2012 07:06.
Usually ships within one to two business days from La Vergne, TN.
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I have been a fan for years. I still have the t-shirt from their first concert tour.
Sadly, this was a weak effort. The production values (i.e.mixing and effects) were terrible, sounds like someone did it on their computer at home. The tunes lacked integrity and the essence of the message of the songs themselves was lost perhaps in an effort to be new and edgy. It reminded be of when Rebecca St James did a song called "Be still and know" that was practically a heavy metal rock ballad. She seemed to have missed the irony between the words and the sheer volume of her rendition. Jars does not get that bad, but seems to have fallen into the trap of having to be different for the sake of being different.
Not worth it. Sorry guys, I have to be honest.
Jars of Clay / Christmas Songs Jan 21, 2010
Nicely done CD. Our Family enjoyed the music during the Holidays.
For HIS Glory Alone.
Great CD, just wish it had the original Drummer Boy Sep 7, 2009
Great CD! The CD has some great songs on it; I just wish it had the original Drummer Boy on it.
A Bleak Midwinter Christmas Album Feb 5, 2009
I actually bought this back in 2007 when it came out. I'd forgotten about the album until recently when I cleaned out one of my cars before selling it. What I remembered was, "I need to warn others."
It's a strange piece of work from a group that's known in the past as "edgy." At first, it comes off as a disappointing little effort, the sort of thing that you can imagine being thrown together with a week or so of studio time with no prior planning or rehearsal. By the third song you're almost hearing the band members saying, "yeah, the company told us we HAD to do a Christmas album, so here it is." Almost nothing resembles their earlier work, instead mostly bland renditions of a handful of favorites - performed by a cover band trying to sound like, well, JOC. A couple of times it almost seems as if they may cut through and give us something that's truly original or at least interesting, but then pull back at the last moment. What you have is a Christmas meal that has all the interest of a fruitcake that got packed away by accident in last year's tree lights.
Which may be the album's genius. This could be a bit of a stretch, but I'm left wondering if there's a context to it that's sooooo deep it's almost impenetrable. Because by the time I reached "Bleak Midwinter" I began wondering if this whole work wasn't some sort of message these guys were trying to send us. No kidding, the CD artwork is so insipid that it's almost funny, but a sad kind of funny. And I wondered if Jars of Clay isn't saying just that about themselves - and the rest of us. That Christian recording artists are no better than anyone else at capitalizing on the holiday of the birth of Christ. That the holiday's message in our churches, much less the public square, has become a pretty tasteless and uninteresting meal that's thankfully only dragged out once a year. That for all the holiday cheeriness we can conjure up, there's still a great deal of sadness beneath it all - and it's mostly because our culture has demanded so much of a season, a time hijacked by retailers to make up for all the woeful waste of time and money we've indulged in throughout the year. Originality, even the charm of simple beauty, is given over to overdubbed, overworked and overdone art. Whatever was pure and lovely about this band from back in 95 is gone. I wondered if the band members weren't almost saying goodbye to us when "I heard the bells."
I'm left wondering if this CD is, in fact, the Andy Kaufman of all Christmas albums. If so, it's still way beyond most folks who'll ever listen to it. And in a strange way, maybe that's what they had in mind all along. Strange indeed.
Not Yer Great-Grandma's Tunes Jan 15, 2009
Wonderful!!!! Jars of Clay put a new beat to Christmas songs without going extreme. I'm 50 yrs old and I've always preferred classic rock. I also get bored with the same stuff century after century (yes, I can say that now). I really enjoy the way this group sounds and that they appreciate Christmas in a way other musicians might not. That just makes it more special for me.
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