The Night Before Christmas

It’s that time of the year to make a list and check it twice to make sure you’ve added the brand new The Puppini Sisters Christmas EP: Dear Santa, I Can Explain… Featuring four never-before-released original Christmas songs that are bound to become classics played every year from now on! This fantastic quartet of songs are the perfect addition to Christmas with The Puppini Sisters, their all-time best-selling festive album, and to the classic single Jingle Bells, which Universal Music are re-releasing as a remastered track to coincide with Christmas 2021! Christmas At Home is a limited edition live album that the Puppini Sisters put out in December 2020. This was only available through their website and was made when ordered.

One thing is certain in this uncertain world – you can trust Ashley Hutchings to do interesting things with various areas of British folk and rock music. In the case of the Albion Dance Band, under its various names, the focus was on mutating traditional English dance and folk music, which led to escapades involving traditional tunes, Morris dancers, double drummers, dance callers, Philip Pickett's entire collection of medieval instruments, and serious rock guitar front lines that tend to leap onto the hay cart and start blazing away. The Prospect Before Us is particularly unusual, even for Hutchings and the Albions – a number of the tracks were recorded live in the studio, complete with dancing by the Albion Morris Men, an effort that resulted in some especially raucous moments: the bonus version of "Merry Sherwood Rangers" is far more staid than the live rendition that made it to the original version of this album. An essential purchase, we think.