Phoebe Bridgers has released her haunting cover of McCarthy Trenching’s ‘Christmas Song,’ featuring vocals by Jackson Browne. This wistful, festive song is sewn with deceptively dark lyrical images that catch you off guard, garnishes your ears, like the white icy blanket of snow that covers the cities rooftops. Listen below, it’s now available via all DSPs. Of the cover, Bridgers explains:
“McCarthy Trenching is singer-songwriter Dan McCarthy’s band. We played a show together in Omaha this last year. They named the band after the trenching company owned by Dan’s uncle so they could sell those t-shirts instead of having to make their own. The first time I heard this song it hit me like a ton of bricks. A lot of McCarthy Trenching songs do that. It’s not that often that I hear a Christmas song that doesn’t make me want to quit music. I played a show in L.A. around the holidays last year where I covered it for the first time. Jackson Browne was there, and he came up to me after the show to tell me how much he loved the song. A couple days later, Dan got a Bandcamp notification on his desktop computer that someone paid 50 bucks for his record and wrote a nice note and signed it Jackson Browne. He thought someone was fucking with him. So when I decided to record a version of the song, I knew who I wanted to sing on it. Plus, I have wanted to make music with Jackson as long as I’ve wanted to make music.”
This year Bridgers, Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus released the boygenius album. While her spellbinding debut album, Stranger In The Alps, came out last year.
