I am a big fan of Sufjan’s Christmas songs and the proud owner of the first five EP’s collecting his festive output.

Songs For Christmas is a box set of five EPs released over six years between 2001-2006 (the missing year is 2004 when Stevens was  busy making Illinois). These collections of stripped-down carols, covers and originals where originally recorded as gifts for family and friends.

Now he is releasing the follow up(s)!

Silver & Gold: Songs for Christmas, Vols. 6-10 compiles five EPs recorded between 2006 and 2010.

Christmas Unicorn from the new collection, a 12-minute song that includes snippets from the classic “Love will tear us appart”, really great stuff!:

Press release:

“Silver & Gold is more than just another Christmas album, but an ongoing exercise in theme and variation, an annual tradition that offers this songwriter a chance to experiment with fashion and technique without taking himself too seriously. Sufjan’s playful (yet purposeful) expedition through the superficial landscape of sugar plum fairies and marshmallow fluff has produced an exuberant musical account of “all things Christmas” in the pursuit of the sublime. What distinguishes this project from the glut of Christmas albums saturating the market today are Sufjan’s unguarded enthusiasm for the genre itself (the sense of freedom he shows in celebrating with reverence and rebellion) and the belief that Christmas music contains a multiplicity of sacred and secular significance (from Baby Jesus to Babes in Toyland) that is ultimately ours for the taking. It’s safe to say that no one has taken it further than Sufjan, for better and for worse.”

Silver & Gold will be available in CD and vinyl formats, as well as as a digital download.

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