Of course, indie music snobs and indeed any self-respecting music fan can agree upon one thing: that we would rather stab ourselves in the ears with a sharp biro pen than listen to the kitsch and gut wrenchingly twee sounds that are all Christmas music.

So it is with something of a heavy heart, various bruises to the ego, and huge amounts of cognitive dissonance that I whisper quietly that I have found a Christmas track that does not make me want to beat myself around the head with a grinch-shaped baseball bat. In fact it is incredibly good.

So here it is, Our World, by U.S. Highball which is described on the Bandcamp page as such:

“This Christmas, we thought it’d be fun to tackle a song from one of our favourite holiday films, Jim Henson’s 1977 masterpiece Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas. Our World, penned by the legendary songwriter Paul Williams for the film’s impeccable soundtrack, is a stirring ode to worldwide brotherly love. Recorded at home over a couple of wintry afternoons, we’ve taken this evocative ballad and turned it into a two-minute jangle-pop nugget.

Beyond the above this is U.S.Highball at their very best, diligently threading subtle twee-pop propensities through jangly indie-pop songs that thrive upon earworm melodies that are as simplistic as they are totally moreish.

File in your Xmas music folder with the only other Xmas track that is any good (All I Want For Xmas Is The Dukla Prague by Half Man Half Biscuit) and play both on loop all Xmas to drown out all the other nonsense that usually makes our ears bleed.

All proceeds from sales go to the International Otter Survival Fund, an Isle of Skye-based charity dedicated to the conservation and protection of otters around the world, so stop being a miserable old scrooge and help some otters to survive at Xmas!

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