Review: Christmas Music (Trevor Gordon Hall - Let Your Heart Be Light)

Christmas music sucks. It's the same songs, year after year, played incessantly for more than a month straight of EVERY SINGLE YEAR. It doesn't matter that there are new artists singing them; they're doing nothing new. For this reason, I limit myself to only listening to Christmas music at church and on Christmas and Christmas eve. That's it.

And it's not me being anti-Christmas or anything. I hate the commercialization of it and the music; that's it.

Needless to say, my expansive music collection has chosen to skip over the Christmas-themed music. I have 3 Christmas albums: the RelientK one from when I was in middle school, my friend Matt's band, and Trevor Gordon Hall's, Let Your Heart Be Light, The Christmas Album. I haven't listened to the Relient K one in eons and, honestly, I haven't unwrapped Matt's yet. If I try to preempt the Christmas music strike, bad things happen.

But somewhat out of obligation, I decided to take a risk this year. A HUGE risk. About a week ago, I got out Trevor's album and threw it in my car. I replaced the live August Burns Red album (that I was at the show for!) to listen to Christmas music?! And I'm there asking myself, Why?!


It's Trevor Gordon Hall. He's a musical genius, innovator, and a friend. My logic was that if anyone could do Christmas music right, it'd be a guy with vision like Trevor's. But the whole time I'm nervous. I REALLY don't like Christmas music. I'm thinking to myself, will my respect for Trevor disintegrate after hearing this? Am I going to impulsively drive into oncoming traffic to stop this? What will happen if I actually do like it?! How should I feel?


Yes, I did wonder ALL of those things. But in a moment of trust, I hit play and began my venture to work. It's less than 20 minutes, so I figured, worst case, it'd be a crappy morning drive.


I didn't expect, however, to pop the disc out and take it in to work with me. But sometimes you're broadsided like that. I had high hopes and reasonable expectations, but this album I would listen to year-round.

Here's the breakdown:

It starts out with Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas; commercialized and generic, but fresh. It's got a nice intro tacked onto it and some good harmonic work throughout.

Next is I Saw Three Ships. This is played in a very Trace Bundy-like style; some nice finger work to start off, followed by a very bouncy rhythm that has you bopping back and forth to the music.

O Holy Night follows with a more traditional sound, but done very elegantly. It's got a Don Ross feel to it. Nice and peaceful with few surprises, but just a generally good sounding piece.

The First Noel starts out with The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire). It's a good, familiar way to lead into the meat of the song. What got me about this one, time and time again, was how organic it sounded; there is so much string noise in all of the right places. So many people try to remove any extraneous noises when these are the ones that make the guitar sing.

White Christmas - from the start you've got this big, resonating harmonic. The song is big and open. A lot of times guys will try to cram as many notes as possible into these songs, but this is the perfect balance.

Frosty the Snowman - pretty typical, but spiced up with some sleigh bells and harmonica part way through the song.

Auld Lang Syne - he brings in a Rhodes and a glockenspiel for this song. I love the sound of glock and guitar. Matt Stevens turned me onto that. There's just something about that mellow bell-like resonance... It's a great arrangement.

Silver Bells - it starts out with what sounds like a ukulele and then gets some nice slide work overlaid on top. It's adds a nice mix to the album. If I had to guess, there's also some looping going on here, as Trevor does some pretty crazy stuff live and would probably be able to do the whole thing live...

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel - fretless bass intro. YES! It's super smooth and is coupled with a slow gear kinda volume swell effect on the guitar. There is actually a lot more focus on the bass than the guitar on this one - which on a 15 track album makes for a good break.

Christmas Time Is Here - this brings you back to the guitar-centricity of the album. It's got some nice quiet acoustic parts and then jazzy, lightly distorted leads with a hint of delay, over top.

Count Your Blessings (Instead of Sheep) - is that an e-bow? The spacey, sustain of an e-bow really adds to an album that is, overall, a little slower. Good call by Trevor.

Angels We Have Heard On High - it's nothing exciting, but definitely helps to bring the album together more. It's one of those things I guess you expect to hear, and, like many other tracks on this album, can take you back to the stripped-down simplicity of the original hymns.

Edelweiss - throughout the album, there a few places where Trevor uses an e-bow really subtly. It's one of those things that differentiates between good and great. Here's another instance of that.

Christmas Medley - Usually the contents of a song like this would be enough Christmas music for me for the year. Instead, I've listened to this album maybe 10 times so far. It really is that good.

And there's a bonus track. You'll have to check that one out for yourself...


So tonight and tomorrow you need to listen to this. It is literally the only album on my approved Christmas music list.

spotify: Trevor Gordon Hall – Let Your Heart Be Light - The Christmas Album


not on the album, but SO GOOD live -