London's House Arrest combine with New York natives Torture & The Desert Spiders for a fission/fusion fairytale Christmas.
Photo: Lou Smith | Words: Alexandra Dominica
A nuclear family is one that consists traditionally of two parents and at least one child. That's the long-established stereotype and what you see in all of those hideously saccharine Christmas adverts. Whenever Kerry Katona appears in the uncanny valley banquets of about 20 grinning faces stuffed with cocktail sausages, we can't help but feel slightly perturbed. But most families these days just don't fall into that bracket. Many of us have to find our own way in the world and create our own little families at Christmas. Those that consist of our friends, our comrades, our weird neighbours and general barfly, pub-chum queerfolk.
But also there's the other nuclear, you know the one that's all. 'Melt your skin off like the Nazis in Raiders of The Lost Ark' type of nuclear. That's the one House Arrest has created. Think of 'Oppenheimer', but with loads of mince pies, flakey pastries and tinsel. In many cases, Christmas can be a heady mixture of both nuclears. Getting the family together at Chrimbo can be wonderfully explosive.
House Arrest are a raucous, frenetic powerhouse at the best of times, but here they've slowed it right down and injected some festive jangly folk-garage. It's refreshing. Jasper's red smoky rasping vocals go perfectly with the soothing blue silk tones of New York native Anna of Torture and The Desert Spiders. As colour theory would have it, these two musical titans have created a rather grand purple flammagenitus. Together they have brought us a sweetly sardonic Christmas ballad very much akin to 'Fairytale of New York', in their case more a Fairytale of South London. It's acerbic, it's poetic, it's delightfully disturbing.
It's a beautiful yet cynical song. It's about removing the rose-tinted goggles of Christmas desensitisation and getting hit with stone cold reality. It's hard to feel Christmassy when there's so much poverty, war and death swarming all around us. We can't all feed the world when our "insides are burning". It almost makes you feel ashamed to be celebrating and you can't help but develop a cynicism for it all. When Jesus' birthplace is being carpet-bombed every minute, it's difficult to feel any sense of solace. But yet, we still sit and down the second bottle of Bailey's and watch 'Elf'.
House Arrest's mushroom cloud is swarming just as much internally as it is externally: "No one is safe from the flames that arise from ourselves". Never has a truer word been spoken at Christmas. It brings up a lot of old wounds for many people. What is the happiest day for many is for others a reminder of everything they do not have. It's an unstitching of unhealed wounds, an unbottling of a thousand cans of worms. In the words of Oppenheimer, "A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent."
All in all, House Arrest's 'Nuclear Christmas' has a dualistic soul of emotional desolation, social disillusionment and worldwide devastation. It's an acerbic and apocalyptic commentary that is an excellent and welcome addition to the Christmas jukebox. There's no one around, something's coming over the hills and we're all gonna fry. We all feel a bit emotionally radioactive. But isn't that what Christmastime is all about?
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