Minnventory Holiday joy and holiday bleakness: Six great Minnesota songs from both sides of the divide

Bing Crosby And The Andrews Sisters, "Mele Kalikimaka"
The Minneapolis-born sisters recorded several Christmas carols with Crosby in the '40s and '50s, but their rendition of this rarely heard "Hawaiian" song is easily the best. After a slack-key guitar intro, they take turns on the verses, pitting Crosby's mellow croon against the Andrews Sisters' bright three-part harmonies. The result is as invigorating as a stocking full of fresh pineapple.

Mele Kalikimaka - Bing Crosby,...

Roma di Luna, "Red Walls"
The folky string group's new Christmas EP (which it's releasing at its show tonight at the Cedar Cultural Center) features quiet traditional numbers and a nice cover of Joni Mitchell's melancholy "River," but the bouncy original "Red Walls" is the one to add to the holiday rotation. Channy Moon Casselle marvels over a place where "people don't know what it feels like to have cold bones" so lightheartedly that it sounds like she's pitying them. Minnesotans may put up with a lot of bad weather, but this track will have them too busy dancing to care.

Red Walls - Roma di Luna

Tom Waits, "Christmas Card From A Hooker In Minneapolis"
The first of two songs Waits devoted to downtown Minneapolis' seedier days ("9th & Hennepin" came a few years later), "Christmas Card" is just what it sounds like. Waits wanders through her postcard message spreading good news: a pregnancy, newfound sobriety, a good man who plays trombone and treats her right. But the coda delivers a crushing blow, when his hooker comes clean.

Low, "Just Like Christmas"
It's little surprise that there is plenty of spare, somber minimalism on Low's nearly perfect 1999 Christmas EP, like its cover of the Elvis standard "Blue Christmas," which beautifully distills the song down to its purest, loneliest essence. But the Duluth trio also brings an unexpected delight with the lovely leadoff track "Just Like Christmas," a poppy and upbeat sleighbell-driven tune that serves as a simple reminder that what's important to the season isn't the snow cover on the ground, but the companionship of the people you're with. ("Just Like Christmas" can be heard as streaming audio via the player on Low's homepage.)

Atmosphere, "If I Was Santa Claus"
Slug isn't making a list of the naughty and the nice on this standout number from 2000's Lucy Ford: The Atmosphere EPs disc—instead, it's a list of all the ways he'd make the world better if he were a better person. He'd buy you shoes if he was rich, teach you if he was learned, make a feast for the children if he could cook—and, "if I was an honest man," quit writing songs and try instead to just be the better person he's trying to describe. With his usual incisive self-criticism, Slug lays out the divide between his honest desire to improve and the reality of getting there: "I love giving but I'm bad at receiving; the truth is, I'd prefer to be the one bleeding."

If I Was Santa Claus - Atmosph...

Charlie Parr, "Bethlehem"
On this song from his 2005 album Rooster, Duluth bluesman Charlie Parr sets up a breathtakingly audacious scene that cuts right to the heart of the Biblical story of Christmas and questions its whole premise: An embittered father, coincidentally also named Joseph and also from Bethlehem, shows up at Jesus' crucifixion and ruminates on the fate of his own son, who was murdered 33 years earlier when King Herod had all the male children in Bethlehem killed in an attempt to avoid a prophecy that a boy from the town would usurp him. Joseph's grief and rage is undimmed by time, and the claims he's heard about this guy on the cross supposedly dying for everyone's sins are no consolation. He's angry not only at the evil men who committed the murder, but the God that would allow it to happen. After screaming curses at the sky, he goes home, burns his possessions, and wanders the earth the rest of his days. As they said in "Eleanor Rigby": No one was saved. Parr tells this bleak tale with stark, powerful simplicity, and it's a testament to his skill that he not only pulls it off, but creates one of his most unforgettable songs. Still: Merry Christmas, huh?

Bethlehem - Charlie Parr