Dyer, Tom
X-mas - 30 Years In The Making
'X-mas: 30 Years In The Making' features the surprisingly popular 'No Lou This Xmas', inspired by the late, great Lou Reed. Written and released one week before Christmas 2013, it was this final brick Dyer needed for this album, recorded sporadically since 1983. Tom Dyer is a Seattle guy with an inconsistent musical predilection, the King of Stylistic Variation. On this album that eclectic appraoch is present in full force. There's a choral number, a rocking Lou Reed tribute, a guitar instrumental, a torch song, a little swing sextet, folky-protest, ska, a sea chanty, some bad country, many guitar solos and of course, the Beach Boys. While much of this is a one man affair, Dyer shows taste and decorum in picking a nice selection of minor Pacific NW music deities to round out the effort, with Gary Minkler from Red Dress, Jeff Kelly of the Green Pajamas and others. Somehow, despite seeming like an unholy mess on paper, it hangs together into a pleasing, (mostly) non-secular holiday adventure.