Wrapping: Soft-focus candlelight on the cover; minimalist credits.
Style: Bleak, midwinter acoustic guitar, occasional carol-singer harmonies, and at the close, piano accompaniment by Joshua Raoul Brody on The Christmas Song, all framing Red House Painters and Sun Kil Moon frontman Kozelek's wistful, not wishful voice.
Content: 14 tracks, eight of them lifted starkly and darkly from the hymn book, such as Away In A Manger and an a cappella O Come, All Ye Faithful, and those modern-day "carols" otherwise known as Chrissie Hynde's 2,000 Miles and Greg Lake's I Believe In Father Christmas.
'Tis the reason to be jolly: A depressed Kozelek appropriating dialogue from 1965 animation A Charlie Brown Christmas in Christmas Time Is Here. "Of all the Mark Kozeleks in the world, you are Mark Kozelekiest," he is told.
Scrooge moan: An original Kozelek Christmas song would have made it even more Kozelekier.
White Christmas? No! Dream on.
Blue Christmas? None bluer this Christmas.
Stocking or shocking? Perfect for those craving a sequel to Low's cult 1999 album, Christmas; still the benchmark in Yule melancholia.
Charles Hutchinson
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