Watch Priests Cover “Christmas Wrapping” At A 3rd Stereogum Christmas Show
Daniel Topete
Last week, a few hundred of us came out to hang out with us at our third annual Stereogum Christmas Show, and it fucking ruled. Priests, Empath, and Nervous Dater all played, and they all sounded titanic. As someone who spent seven hours on a train coming up to the show, and who got the chance to play Rihanna and INXS songs between bands, I can report that the whole affair was worth whatever I had to do to get there.
If you’ve seen Priests before, you already know that they’re one of the best live bands on the face of the earth. On Thursday night, they played a few unreleased songs, as well as towering bangers like “No Big Bang.” And they also gave us a one-time-only treat: A cover of the Waitresses’ 1981 new wave holiday anthem “Christmas Wrapping,” with Taylor Field sitting in on saxophone.
“Christmas Wrapping” was already a miracle of a song, a giddy and overwhelmingly catchy song about yuletide solitude and chance meetings. (It also, as Katie Alice Greer pointed out while introducing it, has a lot of lyrics.) Priests turned it into something raw and skronky. Below, watch them cover the song in a video by Ryan Muir, and check out some photos of the event from Daniel Topete.
