Christmas With The Smithereens

Limited green colored vinyl LP pressing. Christmas with The Smithereens is more than a Christmas-time cover album. This quartet does an impressive job of channeling the spirt of 1960s rock, and solidly interpreting each memorable tune. The band's originals add a nice twist to the disc and are written with such '60s-savviness that without prior knowledge it would almost be difficult to decide which songs were covers and which were originals. Lead singer Pat DiNizio wraps his husky voice around a smartly selected collection of classic seasonal rockers such as "Run Rudolph Run" and "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree," along with more obscure fare. It's the latter that makes this such a delight, as the band tears into rugged re-workings of the Ramones' "Merry Christmas (I Don't Want to Fight Tonight)," the Who's crunchy "Christmas" (from Tommy) and even a rare Beatles track grabbed from the Liverpool band's '60s fan club only discs.

• 1 Waking Up on Christmas Morning
• 2 Santa Bring My Baby Back (To Me)
• 3 Merry Christmas, Baby
• 4 Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree
• 5 Christmas Time All Over the World
• 6 Christmas
• 7 'Twas the Night Before Christmas
• 8 Run Rudolph Run
• 9 Merry Christmas (I Don't Want to Fight Tonight)
• 10 Christmas (I Remember)
• 11 Auld Lang Syne