Ben Folds is entering the Christmas album game for the very first time. The holiday record, comprised of mostly original songs, plus a few covers of standards, comes out next month and it’s called Sleigher (so punny — get it?).
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Ahead of it’s October 25 arrival, Ben is getting the holly jolly feels flowing by premiering two of the album’s tracks, including Folds’ take on the familiar mid-century carol, “The Christmas Song,” as well as an original, “We Could Have This,” a duet with actress and touring partner Lindsey Kraft, who also co-wrote the song.
“Christmas is constant. Allowing you to take stock of what’s different, to understand who you are and all the ways you’ve grown and changed," Ben expressed in the press release for the new album. “There’s something about Christmas that really pushes you to ask, 'Who am I now? How did I get here?' You can look back on Christmases from your childhood and see the progression, or you can zoom out and look back at Christmas songs from the ‘30s and ‘40s and ‘50s and see we’ve evolved socially and culturally,” Folds explained. “Having that consistent framework is really illuminating. I love those holiday classics that are totally broad and timeless, but I’ve only ever been able to be myself, and I realized the most generous thing I could do with this album was write the best songs I could, no matter where that took me. Anything else just wouldn’t ring true."
Sharing how Sleigher came together with Variety, Folds spoke more about how his original intent was to actually take it easy by doing covers. It wasn’t long before Ben was bitten by the creative bug to write a sleigh-full of original material for the album instead.
“It’s fun to write something almost to an assignment, and that’s kind of what this was,” Folds expressed to the outlet about the project. “I always kind of like something that’ll just make me write,” he added, sharing that he proposed to the label to get a combined budget for 2023’s What Matters Most and a separate Christmas album. When it came time to really follow through on the latter, Folds said, “I had felt like I might be a really good curator of just really neat Christmas songs somehow, but that was a little ignorant. I was surprised not to be able to find as many covers as I thought.”
That being said, his original concept wasn’t completely futile. “I did find a couple — like the album ends with the Mills Brothers’ ‘You Don’t Have to Be a Santa Claus,’ which is basically a Depression-era sentiment of ‘Why don’t you just help people all year long? Open your heart all the rest of the year and help a fellow out,’ and I really liked that. And I found a Burt Bacharach/Herb Alpert cover for the record, ‘The Bell That Couldn’t Jingle,’ which I hadn’t heard before. Burt Bacharach could just s*** stuff out like that that was just superior every time."
And then the “chestnuts roasting on the open fire,” Ben said of the Christmas classic “The Christmas Song” written by Robert Wells and Mel Tormé and made famous by Nat King Cole. “I felt like I need to do the most popular one of all time, and just do it in a way that is a complete challenge, live, with no bass on it or anything.” Folds’ version offers a relatively stripped-down and traditional version of the song, featuring an unexpected harmonica solo.
Listen to both songs above and check out the full Sleigher tracklist below.
Sleigher
1. “Little Drummer Bolero”
2. “Sleepwalking Through Christmas”
3. “Me And Maurice”
4. “Christmas Time Rhyme”
5. “Waiting for Snow”
6. “We Could Have This” (Feat. Lindsey Kraft)
7. “The Christmas Song”
8. “The Bell That Couldn’t Jingle”
9. “Xmas Aye Eye”
10. “You Don’t Have To Be A Santa Claus”