While everyone is digging out their old favourites for Christmas playlists, The Strokes’ lead guitarist Albert Hammond Jr. is teaming up with Amazon for a new take on the 30s classic ‘The Little Boy That Santa Claus Forgot’ for their annual indie compilation.
Albert Hammond Jr. at ‘Inherent Vice’ premiere
Streaming exclusively in Prime Music is Amazon’s festive collection ‘Indie for the Holidays’ featuring famous tunes re-done by some of their favourite indie artists. By Albert Hammond Jr. wasn’t about to do a generic cover of Vera Lynn and Nat King Cole’s 1937 hit, and instead he included the chorus from the 1970 hit ‘My Sweet Lord’ by the Beatles’ George Harrison.
Still, Albert manages to make ‘The Little Boy That Santa Claus Forgot’ as classic-sounding as it ever was – but that’s the beauty of the artists selected by Amazon’s Music Experts. Also on the new compilation are The Dandy Warhols (‘Silver Bells’), Los Campesinos! (‘When Christmas Comes’), PINS (‘Come On Home (It’s Christmas)’), Reverend Horton Heat (‘Donuts in the Snow’), Lisa Loeb (‘Champagne (I’m Ready)’), Lemon Twigs (‘Coventry Carol’) and Jeff the Brotherhood (‘Brighid’s Flame’).
Albert dropped his last solo studio album ‘Momentary Masters’ in 2015, reaching number three on the Top Heatseekers chart. The Strokes’ last release was an EP entitled ‘Future Present Past’ which came out in 2016. It was announced earlier this year, however, that the band were working on a new full-length album to follow 2013’s ‘Comedown Machine’.
‘The Strokes are alive and well and living in New York City. We are working on music and we want to put music out hopefully next year’, Albert’s bandmate Nick Valensi told NME. ‘If I start saying that now, though, then people just get too excited and then there’s all this hype you’ve got to compete with and that’s not fun. If anything I’d rather just pull a Beyoncé next year and just drop s**t.’
More: The Strokes drop ‘Future Present Past’ EP
‘Indie for the Holidays’ will be released on December 1st 2017.
