Band: Family Force 5
Album: Family Force 5’s Christmas Pageant
Label: Transparent Media Group
Release Date: Oct 6, 2009
Reviewed By: Chris W
Tracks:
- Carol Of The Bells
- Little Drummer Boy
- Christmas Time Is Here
- My Favorite Things
- Angels We Have Heard On High
- Do You Hear What I Hear
- T’was The Night Before Christmas
- It’s Christmas Day
- The Baby
- Wonderful Christmastime
Other possible titles for this album could have been “T-Pain’s Merry Crunkmas” Or “A Very Auto-Tuned Christmas” Christmas albums have a tendency to suck unless you’re a fan of the particular band who made the album and even then they can be downright awful.
Christmas Pageant is a further departure from Family Force 5’s debut sound, very noticeably lacking the big arena guitar sound. The album is made up of 8 Christmas songs and 2 original songs. The 8 choices include some of the standard’s and 2 that I found to be rather different choices; My Favorite Things from The Sound of Music, and Christmastime Is Here from A Charlie Brown Christmas. The songs are standard Family Force style, heavily auto-tuned crunk-rock with a dose of Family Force 5 humor. Some lyrics were re-written such as “I played my drum machine puh rum pum pum pum, I played my beats for him puh rum pum pum pum” I really enjoy their version of Angels We Have Heard On High, granted it has some completely ridiculous auto-tune effects but it also contains those guitars I mentioned earlier as well as vocal harmony not provided by auto-tune. It’s Christmas Day is a great reminder that despite all of their absurdities Family Force 5 can write a great song and Soul Glow Activatur is perfectly capable of singing well without a vocoder or auto-tune. The Baby is also a Family Force 5 original track and like It’s Christmas Day brings mention to Christmas’s meaning as Christ’s birthday the opening lyrics being “North Star, hanging in the sky/ Shining down, where He lies/ Gonna be a life changer/ Sleeping in a manger, tonight” but it’s done in that bizarre Family Force style that they are known for.
Overall: If you’re a part of the rabid fan base that Family Force 5 has or if you’ve enjoyed any of their previous cd’s chances are you will like this. If you don’t fit into either of those categories this is not even close to something you’ll enjoy. It’s the same as any other Christmas album; heavily stylized to fit the band that recorded it. However I would say that It’s Christmas Day is worth checking out, even if you’re not a fan of the band, it’s a great song.
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