Yes, Christmas is a joyous and wonderful time of year, but sometimes it also fucking blows. While there may be much mistletoe-ing and other people’s hearts a glowing, sometimes it’s not the hap-hap-happiest time of the year and you mutter, “hey Christmas, can’t we just put this off for another 6 months? Maybe a year?” Then when Christmas says “no,” and reaches in to hug you, you burn the fat fucker with a cigarette and run like hell.

Sometimes you lose your baby, sometimes your credit sucks, and sometimes you just get overwhelmingly pissed off in the foodcourt and punch the Sbarro’s kid in the ear because his pizza tastes like shit and you paid your last three bucks for it. Oh, and I suppose the overwhelmingly commercial whoring of the birth of the messiah could drive you to it too. But whatever the reason, a lot of times, many of us just want to say “not this and not now, asshole.”

Justin Collins, of Justin and the Cosmics, wrote and recorded this with wunder-producer Adam Landry, and they nailed it. There’s a fine art to writing a sad Christmas song, and only a handful of people have done it on purpose. More people tend to write what are supposed to be happy songs that just come out sad as hell. Justin and Adam flipped the table and wrote a stunningly sad Christmas song that’s also perversely joyful (thanks primarily to the Georgettes).

Now Justin is one of my favorite up and coming Southern rockers. “Sundress Song” is one the best tracks I came across this past year. Justin doesn’t sound like anyone else out there right now. He has an old school sound that matches perfectly with Adam Landry and the Playground Sound.

A lot of his last album “Hanging Out in My Body” has a 60’s feel to me, but not the way you’re probably expecting. When most bands have a 60’s sound, they harken back to the hippy haze of the Woodstock era, back when the baby boomers turned everything from a concert to a trip to the corner store into a drug addled, faux religious experience, focused more on a scene than music and movements. But not Justin- his album captures the potential energy of the early 60’s, back before the best laid plans transformed into a big naked party for future yuppies. (Don’t get me wrong, I wish I was rolling around in the mud with a hot little piece of hippy ass tripping her twat off too, but I’m pissed that I missed it yet have to live with the repercussions).

Justin exudes the raw, unbridled energy of a potential explosion rooted in an innocence that’s just minutes away from getting down and dirty at a little dive on the wrong side of town while your parents think you’re at the movie theatre. It’s rock-n-fuckin-roll in its truest form. No pyrotechnics. No costumes. No dancers. No iTunes commercials. Just good music. At least that’s how I hear it.