With literally thousands of versions of secular and sacred Christmas songs in the canons of every musical genre and a few hundred new renditions dropping every year, it’s easy to take for granted the melodic charms of many of them – particularly those that qualify as religious carols – that have made them endearing to generation after generation.
Which is why the dynamic guitar duo of Grammy winning slack key guitarist Jim “Kimo” West and producer/multi-instrumentalist and “sound painter” David Vito Gregoli’s thoughtful, intricate and meditative version of “Hark The Herald Angels Sing” is so remarkable.
Because of Vince Guaraldi, Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby and Mariah Carey, we can hum this classic on our sleep – but remarkably, we’ve never heard a take on it that’s so perfectly designed for a quiet moment amidst the holiday rush and reflections on God/Jesus (its original lyrical subject), family, friends and all the things we can be grateful for no matter what we are going through during any given December. In the over-commercialized world of holiday music, it’s rare to discover a piece that so artfully blends the overly familiar with a sense of soul that penetrates the heart and captures the often overshadowed true spirit of the holiday season.
The sonic magic West and Gregoli bring to “Hark” is rooted in the crystalline tones of their interacting acoustic guitars, its soothing rhythms and those organic scrapings. Yet those elements are just the foundations of a profound, soul-piercing production, sound design and ambience which includes a spirited array of vibes from Gregoli’s Santa’s bag full of sounds – fretless bass, touches of ukulele, nylon guitar and the more exotic stringed instruments of the dobro and Puerto Rican cuatro.
While West’s intimate, graceful through line of the familiar melody invites us to hum or sing along, Gregoli treats our ears to his always fascinating vision that this time includes exciting counter melodies that make this one of the most original instrumental takes on this piece in many years.
The duo’s intricate holiday delight caps an extraordinary year for them, as they complemented their other solo and collaborative work with the singles “Fragile” and “On the Road To Windham,” which they followed with the extraordinary dual album, the perfectly titled Kimo Vito.
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