Alan Partridge in a pear tree

I've posted the following song on here before - probably more than once - but I do enjoy wheeling it out at this time of year as, by rights, it should be played everywhere at Christmas instead of, well, barely anywhere outside the music blogosphere. It's one-off Geordie supergroup The Joseph & Mary Chain with their fun-packed, sublime version of, well, this!

The Twelve Days of Christmas

Alan Partridge in a pear tree

Released two years ago in a limited edition 7" of 1000 copies, The Joseph and Mary Chain's Twelve Days of Christmas soon became my favourite interpretation of this particular Christmas carol, narrowly edging out Alan Partridge's sadly truncated version from Knowing Me, Knowing Yule!

The Joseph and Mary Chain were basically a north-eastern supergroup featuring Kathryn Williams, The Futureheads, Field Music, Rosita, The Golden Virgins and various other Sunderland-based bands. They got together to record Twelve Days in aid of Shelter, the national charity campaigning on housing and homelessness, and the song ended up on Shelter's 2006 compilation It's Not Like Christmas.

The album also features festive songs from the likes of El Perro Del Mar, Emmy The Great, Electric Soft Parade and Envelopes (lots of acts with names beginning with the letter E, basically!). All profits from sales of the album, which can be bought as a download or CD from here, go directly to support Shelter.

The Joseph and Mary Chain - Twelve Days of Christmas mp3
(available for 7 days - rather than 12!)