squircular reasoning

shout out to the entire microgenre of "spirit phone remix album". LOVE that sorta thing!

i don't particularly enjoy most christmas music. i'm not a christian, and having grown up in the oppressive atmosphere of mormonism, it's safe to say i have emotional baggage about christmas. i've become less spiteful and more accepting towards the holiday, as i've processed and worked through the sting (trauma?) of growing up in a cultish church which suppressed enormous parts of my sense of selves for my entire childhood

ironically though, i actually have more negative feelings towards pop secular christmas music than i do towards the overtly religious christmas hymns sung communally in church choir. this is because stores playing music is already a difficult thing for me as an autistic person, and i dread when it comes time to hear "last christmas" or "all i want for christmas" repeatedly on store speakers, while i'm already overloaded with information and stimulation.

most pop christmas music does not actually step out of safe and marketable thematic and acoustic ground, and it tends to sound pretty samey. more adventurous artists may make comedic songs about christmas instead, and these can be fun, but for whatever reason, they usually just don't resonate that much with me. the novelty usually wears off pretty quickly.

so when i became obsessed with lemon demon over the course of 2021, and december rolled around, i was kind of hesitant to listen to that entry in the discography, "I Am Become Christmas EP". i worried it would just be more of what i'm used to- gimmicky tacky comedy Christmas songs that wear thing after the first listen

i was wrong. i fell in love with this EP, basically instantly.

at times, it is emotionally vulnerable. at times, it paints strange and wonderful imagery. at times it is just ridiculously funny and probably hews closest to "gimmicky tacky comedy Christmas song" but maybe i'm just biased towards lemon demon, so i like it anyways. and so much of the sound of this album is just... so atmospheric.

I Am Become Christmas EP is very short, at only 16 minutes long, and i really recommend listening to it, or at least listening to "Christmas Will Be Soon" if nothing else. you can get it on bandcamp for 4$.

have you done that? good. now i'm going to talk, track-by-track, about why i love this album so much. after "Prelude to Presents", a short but tonally important instrumental which provides musical foreshadowing and gives the album a more cohesive, almost cinematic feel, we are introduced to the first full track, and it's one i have a lot of feelings about, so, buckle in.