contact us

Use the form on the right to contact us.

You can edit the text in this area, and change where the contact form on the right submits to, by entering edit mode using the modes on the bottom right.​

         

123 Street Avenue, City Town, 99999

(123) 555-6789

email@address.com

 

You can set your address, phone number, email and site description in the settings tab.
Link to read me page with more information.

Adirondack---More-Rides.jpg

Latest Work

search for me

Filtering by Tag: Sufjan Stevens

Last Christmas? Wherein I Wonder Where the New Christmas Songs At

Chris Klimek

Remember Children of Men, Alfonso Cuaron's brilliant dystopian sci-fi movie about a worldwide pandemic of absolute infertility, wherein the youngest person on Earth is 19 years old?

Well, the youngest Christmas song to be promoted the rarefied rank of a standard -- Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You" -- turns 19 this year. If you think Hollywood has a remake problem, take a look at the holiday charts on Billboard or iTunes. Our pop stars still write new Christmas songs, but we're not embracing them.

In a new essay for Slate, I scratch my chin over when and how the secular seasonal songbook, a living document until a couple a decades ago, came to be locked down tighter than Santa's workshop. 

Read More

There Is No Dignified Way to say "Christmas Unicorn": Sufjan Stevens at the 9:30 Club

Chris Klimek

My review of Sufjan Stevens' "Christmess Sing-a-Long" -- or to use its full, formal designation, the Surfjohn Stevens Christmas Sing-A-Long: Seasonal Affective Disorder Yuletide Disaster Pageant on Ice -- at the 9:30 Club Saturday night appears  in today's Washington Post.

I'm a big admirer of Stevens' giddy, reverent, odd Christmas EPs, installments 6-10 of which have just been released in the Silver & Gold boxed set. I tried to talk to him for my yulemix essay that ran in the paper yesterday. I've used some of his songs on the mix every year. Alas, his label told me he isn't giving interviews. Humbug.

Twelve Songs of Christmas

Chris Klimek

I was asked to provide a sidebar for my Washington Post essay (in today's Sunday Style insert, with Helen Mirren on the cover, which actually came out Friday) about making my annual yulemix. We didn't have room for my brief rationales for choosing the Twelve Songs of Christmas that I did, so I'm posting it here. Bow your heads and tremble before the Twelve Songs of Christmas!

(Not the twelve songs, as if there could be such a thing. Merely a dozen yule-sides that ring my Christmas bell, presented chronologically.)

Read More