Ben Folds had accurately anticipated the anxieties of this most recent election cycle on the opening track of last year’s What Matters Most (specifically, when he sings “That freak show in the landscaping parking lot/Was oh-so-funny then, now it’s not”—as well as warning “Look who’s coming back, coming back for more”, and finishing with “Pray there’s a bottom in sight/Brothers and sisters hold tight”). But then, I suppose it makes sense that the artist most famous for the abortion ballad “Brick” would be attuned to our current political climate; perhaps not coincidentally, “Brick” is also set during the Christmas season.
Such perhaps explains why Ben Folds chose to release his first ever Christmas album—and a deeply melancholy one at that—in October, before Election Day: he mayhaps realized before the rest of us that this forthcoming Holiday season (with all its attendant family gatherings and church parties alongside red-state voters) would be especially rough this year, and that we would need a stiff shot of ennui quicker than usual to get through it.
Not that this album is political in the slightest; only that it evokes a very specific type of seasonal depression. With rather on-the-nose track titles like “Sleepwalking Through Christmas,” “The Bell That Couldn’t Jingle,” and “You Don’t Have To Be A Santa Clause,” Sleigher makes no bones about the mood it is going for. The lively “Christmas Time Rhyme” straight up calls the season “a wonderful bittersweet holiday,” and that same sentiment permeates the entire 34-minute runtime. Even the hopeful love song “We Could Have This” (feat. Lindsey Kraft) is weighted down by the memory of too many Christmases spent alone; and in any case is counter-balanced by the sad-sack, divorced-dad-walking-his-dog-alone-on-Christmas-Eve anthem “Me and Maurice” (which also gives the LP it’s cover art). I have written before about my longstanding quest to find Christmas music I don’t hate, and Sleigher fits snugly into that ever-expanding playlist.
Sleigher’s strongest tracks are actually the two piano instrumentals (opener “Little Drummer Bolero” and centerpiece “Waiting for Snow”), which remind us that sometimes our melancholy (like the Holy Spirit itself) can’t be expressed in words at all. Conversely, it’s weakest cut is the penultimate track “Xmas Aye Eye,” a goofy little play on ChatGPT, wherein Ben Folds’ indulges in his incurable weakness for novelty songs that mar even his best records (e.g. “Rockin’ the Suburbs“, a fantastic album named for what is easily its dumbest song). It’s the sort of lark that, like most AI-generated content, you listen to once then forget about instantly.
Yet credit must be given where credit is due: outside a cover of Nat King Cole’s “The Christmas Song”, Sleigher is composed entirely of originals. Ben Folds didn’t need to do that! He got divorced for the fifth time earlier this year you see, so he could’ve easily just cranked out a Christmas covers collection—that most cash-grab of cash-grabs—to help cover alimony. Seriously, he would’ve easily gotten away with just banging out some Bing Crosby and Vince Guaraldi on the piano and calling it a day. Most Christmas fans are only casual listeners after all, people who just want to hear the hits in the background while they trim the tree or deck the halls or whatever; a covers album probably would have sold better with that crowd, honestly. Hence, I can respect how Ben Folds went the extra mile here; he gave out new music to his fans (and that after nearly a decade of silence before last year) with a generosity worthy of the season. What I respect most, in fact, is that he has striven to not just let Christmas passively happen to him anymore, but to wrestle with the season and at last make it his own.
It is an example for us all to follow. For despite all the forced joyfulness of the season, Christmas has a nasty habit of only amplifying our dread as we grow older, not alleviating it; we too must wrestle with the condescension of God during the Christmas season, like Jacob and the angel, or Christ Himself in Gethsemane, as we prepare for the trials to come. Such is not a contradiction in sentiments: the newborn Babe in Bethlehem also had the Cross looming before Him.