Christmas

There are at least four bands with the name Christmas.

1. Christmas were a band who recorded three albums of quirky neo-psychedelic pop in the late 1980s. Based in Boston, MA, the trio of Liz Cox (aka Miss Lily Banquette, vocals and bongos), Michael Cudahy (aka The Millionaire, guitar and vocals), and bassist Dan Salzmann released their debut album, In Excelsior Dayglo in 1986. The track "Big Plans" became a modest college radio and MTV hit, but the album, owing to Big Time Records' perennial financial woes, could not sustain the band's momentum.

The band relocated to Las Vegas, signed to I.R.S., and released Ultraprophets of Thee Psykick Revolution in 1989. Arguably their finest work, it featured another small-time hit in "Stupid Kids", and the caustic, satirical "Richard Nixon" earned critical attention as well. But the strange, though appealing, record seemed a bit out of step with the top college radio bands that year, and it sunk with little notice.

Christmas recorded Vortex in 1991 but could not immediately find a label for it. In the interim, Cox and Cudahy swapped tongue-in-cheek-psychedelia for tongue-in-cheek lounge music and formed the still quirky, but far more accessible and successful Combustible Edison together with Peter Dixon. When finally released in 1993, the bored-sounding Vortex made barely a ripple.

2. There was also a short-lived UK based band called Christmas led by PJ Harvey's collaborators, Rob Ellis and Tim Farthing. They released a self-titled EP in 2001 on Morpheus Records. Their music placed the emphasis on atmosphere and pure evocation: mournful gothic narratives skated through mordent folky, psych landscapes.

3. Christmas are a four-piece from Malvern, West Midlands, UK. They play a gritty and minimal, yet melodic sludge/doom metal made of long drawn-out pieces, multiple movements and moods.

4. Christmas are also an indie band from Medicine Hat, Alberta.