Send "Glasvegas " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Musicomh |
 This year's most depressing Christmas offering? Pah, John Fratelli, you don't have a snowflake's chance in hell with James Allen and his black clad pals around. You ain't even produced the most depressing single by a Scottish band this year. Yes, that's right. Leading the charge away from mince pies and mulled wine to a half-frozen bottle of cider in Glasgow Necropolis are Jim and the gang, with a mini-album packed to the rafters with such wonderfully festive fair as Fuck You It's Over and Please Come Back (you can just see the 'it's NAE aboot ma father!' protestations starting now, can't you? Get over it, man! Good U2 impression there, mind). All you need to decide is which of the songs on offer here is the most miserable of the lot. Is it the fragile and all-too-short fairytale soundtrack opening of Careful What You Wish For? Or is it Cruel Moon, a Suede-esque piano ballad of epic proportions? Could it be the wonderfully mournful title song and half-arsed bid for the Christmas number one, or even the sublime cover of favourite carol Silent Night? In fact, any one of the six tracks on this indie-stocking-filler-to-die-for could wipe the floor with whatever the opposition wants to throw at it....full text |
| Nme |
| When James Allan peered over his shades at the record company-bankrolled lunch and said yes, he would sign their contract, but he didn’t want a chauffeur, a monkey butler or a sponsorship deal with a leading sunglasses manufacturer brokered as part of the deal, the Columbia chiefs must have wondered what he did want. When he said he wanted to release a Christmas album months after Glasvegas’ debut flew off the shelves, and that it would be recorded in a church in Transylvania, someone probably choked on their asparagus. And then asked Allan if he was sure he didn’t fancy a monkey butler instead. While James has told NME the label bods assumed he was joking, they must have known that a man of his locked-stare conviction was unlikely to let it lie. And so in September, after a few days of pre-production in New York with Rich Costey (who co-helmed their debut), Glasvegas flew to Transylvania....full text |
| Guardian |
| If Glasvegas try any harder to emulate Phil Spector, they'll end up in court for murder. This stocking-filler Christmas album, with its punning title and three-hankie melodrama, is an unabashed homage to the erstwhile tycoon of teen. While US indie bands favour wry, tender Christmas songs, Glasvegas come bearing choirs, bells, a blunt-to-a-fault song about homelessness and a solemn Silent Night, all wreathed in snowstorms of reverb. Mostly, James Allan sounds like someone standing beneath his ex-girlfriend's window on Christmas Eve, trying to woo her back by singing drunkenly until a neighbour throws a shoe at him. Whether you feel inclined to react the same way depends on your affection for Glasvegas's unapologetic sentimentality. But if you can't go over the top at Christmas, when can you?...full text |
Glasvegas lyrics
