Review: Owls And Other Animals & Trash Cats - Happy Birthday Xmas It's Your Birthday

The perfect cover.
    Now, this is my kinda Christmas album! Owls & Other Animals and The Trash Cats (the other other animals??) have teamed up to deliver us a perfect soundtrack for shoving the ol' plastic tree into the fireplace and sitting back and inhaling the fumes. These folks send up the seasonal standards in a fragile, vulnerable lo-fi acoustic set. Whisper-crooning classics like "White Xmas" in a tunnel of introspection. Beauty in the shaky basics. Raw. Another kinda raw is the hellbent hollerin' version of "Grandma Got Run Over" that ain't for the kiddies. Or the adults. Chaos. Hilarity. It is rare to find a holiday release so wobbly, stripped down, schizophrenic, and.... honest. This is what real and interesting people have playing in the background when they laugh and cry and spill their drinks and spill their guts. I dunno who's idea it was to put these two groups together, but what they have created is nothing short of a Christmas miracle! -Harmless



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