Even the most ardent Christmas lovers have to admit that certain aspects of the holiday season can really wear you down. Conversely, a yearning for warmth, good cheer and the company of loved ones still flickers somewhere deep down in the hearts of even the most hardened Scrooge types. Lucky for all of us, Downtown Patriots speak to both sides of that coin with “Christmas Is Here.”
As if the commercial overkill of the holiday season weren’t enough, we’re all feeling the extra strain of political polarization and the havoc it’s wrought on our relationships. DowntownPatriots mastermind Danny Watts empathizes with all of this, which is why “Christmas Is Here” resonates so beautifully with the moment we’re living through.
Listen here:
Watts observes that it feels too soon that Christmas decorations now go up immediately after Halloween, his narrator unable to get his bearings in the inexorable rush forward toward the next excuse for retailers to sell us things. Still wistful for the joy of Christmases long past, Watts nevertheless implores us to remember that this is “no time for hate.”
A longtime aficionado of grunge/alternative rock and Britpop, Watts (who grew up a stone’s throw from where Blur formed) has just gifted us with the latest in a long line of rockin’ Christmas songs that dates back to The Kinks’ “Father Christmas” — only Watts isn’t asking us to sneer at the holiday. Quite the contrary: he’s just trying to find a tiny pocket where that old merry feeling is still alive, however fleeting.
Neither naive nor cynical, Watts sings over an ultra-catchy hook that he would be overjoyed if “just once a year I’d be spending time with the ones I love.” With such modest expectations, you’d think the holidays would be easy to just take for what they are, but we all know that’s easier said than done. Ready or not, Christmas is indeed upon us once again. Luckily, you could do a hell of a lot worse than to have “Christmas Is Here” on-hand to buoy your spirits.
ABOUT DOWNTOWN PATRIOTS
DowntownPatriots is Danny Watts. A multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and producer who fuses together the joy from a myriad of his musical inspirations from ABBA to Zappa and everything in between.
Dance Out Of The Dark, the sophomore DowntownPatriotsalbum, moves a step away from the 2019 hard-rock debut album Legacy to a more nuanced sound of grungy guitars layered with ’80s synths and break beats while still maintaining rock undertones.
Dance Out Of The Dark was released on 10th February 2023 and spawned 4 singles, “Poppy Weeps In The Dark,” “Falling Moon II,” “Said And Done,” and “Your Burden.”
DTP released the 5-song We Don’t Need You EP on 29th September 2023. The EP features the heavy guitar driven anthem “An Angel Kicks My Ass,” which fuses big buzzing synths with a growling guitar riff. If Muse met Led Zeppelin, this might be its offspring.
Watts brings it home for the year with the future classic holiday rock anthem “Christmas Is Here,” out on 1st December 2023.