Universal Int'l
2001
Almost A Full Moon
About This Album
It'd seem odd for an artist as willfully eccentric as Hawksley Workman to be putting out a Christmas album so soon into his career as a solo performer, but he gets off the hook because this is really more a seasonal album than a Christmas album. The typical overtly religious songs found on many Christmas albums are (mostly) gone here, and instead Workman focuses on the other things related to the holidays, like eating, singing, and meeting up with family. Some of them are so tentatively related to the whole holiday experience, in fact, that it's tempting to think of this as the third proper Workman album, but with songs written around the holidays. The opening track, "Claire Fontaine," is one such song, an ode to a paper-making friend's exceptionally fine craft, in which Workman worries that he might not be able to get the paper across the border when he goes home for Christmas. "First Snow of the Year" has a bouncy, childlike quality, completely suited to the song: that youthful longing for that first day of snow, putting on your snow clothes and diving headfirst into a snowbank. There's even a song here about how the common cold can actually be used as a good excuse for not going out into the cold.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4 and 5)

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.