Surprise Christmas Gift of the Year - The Avalanches - We Will Always Love You

 A Christmas Day post for a late 2020 contender.

One of the best films I watched in this strangest of strange years was Force Majeure. An arty but approachable Swedish film from a few years back, it features a controlled avalanche at a ski resort where the snow comes rolling down the mountainside in terrifying force and fury until the onlookers realise they might be about to be enveloped themselves and scatter in disarray.

The avalanche subsides just in time. 2020 has felt like that for many people. It's been too long and too dark and frankly far too frightening. It's nice to get to the end of it frankly. As if by magic, here comes a December, not to say Christmas treat. There almost always seems to be an album that turns up unexpectantly round about now that doesn't seem overly concerned with making the end of year album lists but purely intent on offering  a gift for any who might want to receive it. This is one of the best that I can remember.

This year that honour belongs to The Avalanches' third album We Will Always Love You, nineteen years after their first. They're hardly the most prolific production line workers, not surprising when you consider the way they put their music together, laying sample upon sample in collage in loving tribute to the wondrous joy of music. 

We Will Always Love You would feature highly in end of 2020 countdowns had it appeared earlier. It's a series of waves and emotions, very much a millennium record just as The Avalanches are very much millennium artists.

This is probably their most wistful offering, coming at the end of the year it has. But they're still playing their familiar and ace card. That, 'oh where does that come from?' moment where the sample comes washing over you and you feel that the whole of your life might be passing before your eyes. The Avalanches are astonishingly good at making you feel great. Or at least I can vouch that they're astonishingly good at making me feel great.

Of course, they're not quite as pure in terms of their modus operandi as they once were. For now the world and his wife are queuing up at their door to do their star turns. So you get Johnny Marr, Blood Orange, Perry Farrell, Vashti Bunyan, Karen O, Tricky, Mick Jones, Cornelius and so on and so forth And it all seems to work. It all comes across as quite seamless.

This seems like unprecedented fast work for Avalanches. Their last album Wildflower. came out in 2016 after all, just yesterday by their standards. But this is the timeliest record they have ever or will ever release. One to wrap your presents by or cook your Christmas Sinner to. Have a good one. You've earned it!