VELVET SHEEP’S ALBUM OF THE YEAR PLUS BRAND NEW XMAS “SONG FOR EWE” with BIG STICK “SONG FOR EWE” is the feature where artists & music people beloved by VELVET SHEEP choose an obscure song they’ve been listening to that day. Today I’m thrilled to say it’s the return of ours and John Peel favs Big Stick, whose new full-length, helpfully titled “LP” was their first album proper for 15 years and which is the Velvet Sheep album of the year for 2019 (joining recent ranks of Nightingales, The Wedding Present and The Band of Holy Joy and our first American album of the year since we went from paper zine to digital). Exuberant, seductive and vituperative its never less than totally thrilling, defying genres and yet totally appealing to an ear for noise rock, industrial, indie, punk, and railroad junk. At the time we described it thus “an absolute asthmatic romp, dangerously seductive and bursting at the seams with curmudgeonly cameos” featuring as it does Fred Schneider of the B52s, Jerry A of Poison Idea, Johnny Kelly of Type O Negative and Groovie Mann from industrial pioneers My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult not to mention “first lady of sass brass” Paula Henderson on bari sax, “the man of sensual trombone” Dave Smoota Smith, Satoru Ohashi and Alicia Rau on tempestuous trumpets, Jim Sorensen of El Muchacho on percussion, John Thompson on bass guitar – and Shawn Banks and Mark Lopez taking the racing line on the bongos plus Stevie Wonder/Aretha Franklin player Tom Timko (also on bari sax)… It’s all put together with precision and aplomb by Big Stick incarnate – the dynamic duo of John Gill and Yanna Trance, polyrhythmic post punk polymaths. It’s hard to pick a fav song as they all hit you like a lightning bolt sent from the Gods, but here’s “Calamari Cocoa Butter” that we ran as a vid exclusive earlier this year… More excitingly, if indeed that is physically possible, Big Stick have been even busier, and have made a brand new Christmas record, which is out this Friday (of which more below). Since they’re the perps of our perfect VS album of the year we’d have asked them back anyway for a bonus “song for ewe” but given their Xmas chops it seemed only fitting to ask them to choose a festive tune (of which more later). First off, buckle up with a big black belt and get ready to sit on the lap (and not take in the fumes) of a “SAUCED UP SANTA”…with this video made by John Gill himself… Big Stick’s John Gill says of the record: “I honestly never thought I’d write a Christmas song, but I felt compelled to share the story of what happened to me at the age of five. There was even a photograph taken.” (the photo featured on the front cover of Big Stick’s first ever Christmas mini-LP 12″ record release), proving Gill’s slightly humorous, though somewhat heart warming childhood story. It originates from the day his folks took a sprog sized Gill to the local shopping mall, where he wound up sitting on what was a visibly “Sauced Up Santa’s” lap. Hence the title track “SAUCED UP SANTA” that’s featured in both regular and extended versions on the record. Gill adds, “When the photo of me sitting on an inebriated Santa’s lap surfaced in the family album years later in life, I simply had to write a song about it. I activated my memory banks to recall that distant December day and put it into song.” The song isn’t a derogatory diss of the intoxicated Santa, rather, it’s more of a song expressing grace, forgivness and humility, highlighting the...