Quirky label Sterorrific dares to go where few indie labels care to tread: a Christmas compilation. But embracing a normally mainstream tradition doesn’t take away from Stereorrific’s bizarre image, for the artists on 50,000 Elves Fans Can’t Be Wrong: Transatlantic Pop Christmas Vol. 1 have come up with their own brand of Yuletide melodies, and they’ve spared no dementia. All of the adjectives that normally show up in reviews of Steroerrific CD’s will also show up in this one: funny, cute, sweet, zany, inventive, and endearingly flawed. All sorts of unexpected vintage genres, like bubble gum surf rock, Cheesy monster-mash-ish comedy pop, and yes, even Christmas Carols, get tossed into the garage rock blender. The results are hummable gems of eschewed prettiness and lighthearted insanity. This compilation displays the diversity of Sterorrific’s US/UK roster. Menswear Endowment opens the disc with a slightly dissonant country ballad about “The Loneliest Snowman”. Then, Seks Bomba dives right into the surf rock thing on the upbeat “Double-O Santa”. Things don’t really start getting weird until MJ Hibbet & The Validators go into their maddening, psycho-girl-group refrain of “Give Us A Kiss (for Christmas)!” Mid-record, the prettiness shows up. Mock-techno outfit Nixon delivers a frothy, semi-danceable pop ditty called “Anorak Christmas”. After that, it’s time for the loveliest song on the album, “Chalet” by The Pines, which features feathery female vocals set to ethereal keyboard atmospheres for a snow-falling-on-Christmas-Eve effect. By track 8, the hard rocking starts, albeit hard in a jovial way. Velodrome 2000 let you know that they like the Pixies with a weird punk anthem called “Christmas Sucks”, which starts out with the chorus, ‘We hate Christmas/Cause Christmas sucks’ and ends with ‘We love Christmas/Cause Christmas doesn’t suck’. Yep. Weird. After all this experimentalism, you might be surprised to hear the ending. It’s actually a genuine traditional Christmas carol, the ever enduring “Silent Night”. The Weisstronauts don’t even mess it up too much. They play a tender, country-flavored instrumental version of the classic, complete with a verse of harmonizing guitars. And so, despite its occasional iconoclastic moments, 50,000 Elves Fans Can’t Be Wrong ends on a homey note, and Christmas is exciting, silly, and sentimental with Sterorrific Records.

Holiday music is a tricky genre. Most people appreciate quirky Christmas tunes but don't give them much play. The holidays feel more comfortable with the tried and true carols. Bing Crosby, Andy Williams, Frank Sinatra - these are the folks who sing the Christmas carols I think of around the holidays. It's fun to hear more rocking Christmas tales and hear bands try their hands at the genre, but most times the results are mere curiosity factors. This comp., however, has a chance at turning out a few classic holiday tunes, found amid a bunch of throw-off amusing songs. My favorite song is the lead-off, with Menswear Endowment playing what could truly be a holiday favorite, "The Loneliest Snowman." Taking a lo-fi, playful approach, it lends the silly yet still sweet feel to the somewhat melancholy tale of the snowman. Seks Bomba's loungey "Double-O Santa" is the most amusing tale, extremely well-written and quite catchy (especially with lines like "Well Santa loves his goodies, and unless I'm mistaken / Santa takes his eggnog stirred, never shaken"). There's a few wonderful songs that don't feel much like Christmas songs but deserve recognition. Nixon's "Anorak Christmas" is such sweet-sounding and lovely Swedish synth-pop that I can't help but enjoy it, and gorgeous, rich female-fronted acoustic pop sounds of "Chalet" by the Pines is lovely, even as it feels wintry if not Christmasy. "Give Us a Kiss (For Christmas)" by MJ Hibbett and the Validators gets boring quickly, although the up-tempo instrumentation is pretty good. The disco-meets-surf-rock of The Rory McBrides' "(We Like) Eggnog!" is fun at first but grows tirelessly repetitive and juvenile quickly. The punk-rock "Christmas Sucks" by Velodrome 2000 is horribly annoying, and the garage-rock of The Waistcoats' "(I Wish You Could Be More Like) Santa Claus" is similarly derivitive of the genre and extremely unessential. There's no Christmas in the six-minute ambient/drone of Weevil's "Coventry Carol," and the closer, "Silent Night" by The Weisstronauts, is just a twangy instrumental version of said classic carol. So while none of the songs here will be timeless classics sung by church choirs and resurfacing every year, there's some very fine original Christmas tunes done in a host of unique styles here. There's also a few that show why most rock bands stay away from the holiday genre. All in all, though, it's the best and most diverse take on indie bands celebrating the holidays that I've heard.

50,000,000 Elves Fans Can't Be Wrong, which sports a retro cover featuring multiple Santas wearing gold lame suits, is a fun compilation of U.S. and U.K. artists doing power-pop holiday tunes. Seks Bomba's "Double-O Santa" immediately stands out as a slinky blues number with clever lyrics that cast St. Nick as a James Bond type who prefers his eggnog stirred, not shaken. Menswear Endowment's "The Loneliest Snowman" is a funny tale of unrequited love done to an acoustic arrangement, and MJ Hibbett & the Validators check in with the distinctively anglo pop of "Give Us a Kiss (For Christmas)." The Waistcoats tap into the original British invasion with "(I Wish You Could Be More Like) Santa Claus." The Rory McBrides also recall the 1960s with "(We Like) Egg Nog!" but Velodrome 2000 play spoilsports with their punkish "Christmas Sucks." The album has a few misfires, but for the most part, 50,000,000 Elves Fans Can't Be Wrong - Transatlantic Pop Christmas Volume 1 makes us hope we'll find a Volume 2 under our trees next year.

THIS CLEVERLY TITLED collection's subhead, Transatlantic Pop Christmas Vol. 1, pretty much says it all: With the exception of The Weisstronauts' instrumental take on "Silent Night," the disc compiles 12 holiday-themed tunes written specifically for this project, courtesy of mostly unknown indie-pop bands from the U.K., the U.S., the Netherlands and Sweden. It's probably not the best choice to play at the family Christmas gathering, unless you want to send grandma and gramps home early (and on second thought, maybe that's not such a bad thing), but hipsters would be hard-pressed to find a more perfect holiday album to play in the car while Christmas shopping with friends. Among the welcome offerings: The Rory McBrides' garage-surf rave-up "(We Like) Eggnog!"; the wispy but whimsical "The Loneliest Snowman" by Menswear Endowment; Seks Bomba's "Double-O Santa," in which Father Christmas becomes a secret spy, both musically and lyrically, giving new meaning to the words "When you sleep he'll be watching you/And when you're awake, he'll know that, too/He's got piles and piles of files to help determine your worth/After that he'll track you to the end of the earth