The culmination of two years of peace activism by John Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono, Happy Xmas (War is Over) is a perennial Christmas singalong that started life with the very specific aim of reminding the world, at a time of peace and good will to all men, that war is a choice.
The opening track from the debut album by Atlanta’s Kyle Troop & The Heretics is a slice of hardcore skate punk that compares the supporters at a presidential campaign rally to oversexed nightclub drunks salivating over a pole dancer. In a song inspired by the 2016 presidential primaries, the preaching star of Disco is handing out “sugar water” guaranteed to “leave you wanting more” and at the end of it all, Kyle tells me, “people get to take their candidate home like a cheap date”…
Self-proclaimed New Orleans “soldiers of funk” Dumpstaphunk broke the hiatus in their recording career last year to release this “hopeful, yet cautious” track, featuring guest star Trombone Shorty, with the lofty ambition that we might change society and “see the end of all that is wrong”.