Do you ever listen to the film podcast Blank Check With Griffin And David? You really should. It's consistently one of the best things on the internet. One might even say that it's consistently one of the only good things on the internet. If you are reading this website, it's safe to say that you are into deep popular-culture nerdery, and Blank Check does that with movies in a way that I hope we do with music. The current series on the Coen Brothers is a blast. I don't really like writing about podcasts, and Blank Check doesn't often has a ton of crossover with our world even though they keep booking my friends as guests, but the Slow Xmas series is a good opportunity to bring it up.
Slow Xmas started out as a bit. Blank Check producer Ben Hosley, a true character, once mentioned that he thought slowed-down Christmas music would be a good idea, and then he went and made a whole record of it. Then he made more! It's now an annual compilation series with a whole lot of genuinely cool music. Last year's edition featured people like Dan Boeckner and Julian Lynch. This year's upcoming compilation has a new joint from the perpetually underrated LA garage-psych crew Death Valley Girls, and you get to hear it right now, so merry Christmas.
Death Valley Girls' most recent album, the excellent Islands In The Sky, came out in 2022. Earlier this year, they covered Fleetwood Mac and Link Wray on a single. Now, they've shared their contribution to the Slow Xmas legacy, a shimmering hymn called "Season For Dreaming." The backbeat sounds like the "Be My Baby" intro if you heard it when you were high during a gentle snowfall, and there's some seriously smooth saxophone action all throughout. Listen below.
Slow Xmas 5 is out 11/7 on Bone Sound Inc., and it'll also feature people like Shannon Lay, Nightlands, Dr. Dog's Eric Slick of Dr. Dog, and King Garbage's Zach Cooper. You can pre-order a vinyl copy here.
