Following a 2022 demo, this is the second release from VOYEUR’S MARKET, the solo project of Ash from Calgary, Canada. Inside Songs O’ Yule, you’ll find a jangle-pop set of five Christmas originals and one contrafactum of the COUNTRY TEASERS song “Henry Kringle.” If you’re looking to trade in your more traditional seasonal novelty songs for a lo-fi cassette complete with scratchy guitars and an active tambourine, then look no further.
Twee-punk from Calgary on a very CUB/GO SAILOR/TIGER TRAP kind of trip: blithe femme vocals, a handful of chords, skeletally bashed-out drums, sugary and sweet but not saccharine. If any of the new wave-damaged oddballs of the Lumpy Records diaspora had kneeled at altars to Rose Melberg rather than Su Tissue, they might have produced something not far from the wound-up, start/stop pop bounce of “Going Your Own Way,” and there’s a similarly playful, almost post-punk asymmetry in the bass-forward (and toy keyboard-accented?) “Mrs. K.O.L.” that sounds like OH-OK crashing the International Pop Underground convention—that’s an immediate “yes” from me.
