Our seasonal fever will not subside. After hyping recent holiday singles that ranged from ska-punk to synthwave, it’s now time to set our gentle sights here on the home front, as Massachusetts electrofolk duo Tall Heights have unveiled a delicate rendition of “In The Bleak Midwinter.” It’s only natural a couple of dudes from Sturbridge know what that’s all about.
Tall Heights released their cover — a warm performance of the 1870s Christmas carol poem by English poet Christina Rossetti, put to music by composer Gustav Holst in 1906 — to streaming services yesterday (December 6), complete with a live acoustic performance video filmed at the Shalin Liu Performance Center in Rockport.
“‘In The Bleak Midwinter’ has long been a favorite holiday song of ours,” says the duo. “The descriptive wintery language, the aching melody, the way the song creates fire-like warmth and light in darkness: It really embodies a lot of the things we try to write into our own songs. So, for our rendition of the song, we aspired to turn up the mystery and turn up the ‘bleak’. To us, it’s the mythology and those ancient stories that we hold dear in our hearts that make the holidays so intense, cozy and meaningful.”
It’s also not the only new music from Tall Heights making its way across the frigid late-fall landscape, as they also released a new single in “Raindrop” just after Thanksgiving. It will be featured on the band’s forthcoming third album Juniors, produced and mixed by Mike Mogis (Phoebe Bridgers, Bright Eyes) at his studio in Omaha, set for January 14 release. Tall Heights play The Sinclair in Cambridge the night before, on January 13.
Bring all the spirits; our bleak winter should be in full effect by then.
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