Christmastime is Here
(I Want to Kill a Tree in My House)

BACKGROUND

Our release, Christmastime Is Here (I Want to Kill a Tree at My House), is a song borne from the long tradition of freewheeling Christmas pop music.

Sonically drawing from all eras, Christmastime is Here (I Want to Kill a Tree at My House) casts a whimsical eye on some of the odd ways we go about celebrating the holiday season.

We really don’t need to unpack it, the conceit of Christmas is that it’s laughter and joy but there’s also this collective madness involved in it: the pressures of gift gifting (and getting), being neck-deep in family, balancing work, play, life — all the physical and mental demands of a holiday that looms large above us for a month or more every single year.

Don’t get us wrong, we love Christmas.

We’re almost sure of it.

—

At some point, early on in the life of our music-making, we had a conversation. If we intend to be open to writing songs of all forms — why not a Christmas song? It was a little joke. “We will write a Christmas song.” Kind of like a dare floating out in the wind.

As we neared December we thought we’d push the dare a bit further.

“I picked up a guitar and thought about the Christmas songs of yore, with their litany of celebratory activities, most notably the song It’s The Most Wonderful Time of the Year.”

There'll be parties for hosting
Marshmallows for toasting
And caroling out in the snow
There'll be scary ghost stories
And tales of the glories of
Christmases long, long ago

“It all sounds so nice . . . but what are we actually doing every year?”

Once the song was written on guitar, a discovery process began. What even makes a Christmas song? What is it to produce one? What sets a Christmas song apart beyond its subject matter?

“There was a lunchtime DJ in Atlanta who would do a segment called “Punk Rock Christmas.” He would play Bad Brains or The Ramones while keeping the studio mic on and shaking sleigh bells through the entirety of the song. That idea became elemental as a starting point. We dug in, listening. Asking our subconscious. Our desire was to go big, to cover the bases and draw in all the glories of Christmas music that we loved from ridiculous 80s synth-pop with its commercial sheen to 1960’s holiday romps with a more thrown-together feel. Then we filtered it through our own musical palette and gave it some of our own punch, and Christmastime is Here (I Want to Kill a Tree in My House) is what came out.”

As for the cover?

“First off, we saw this nice font used at a Communist museum in Eastern Europe and thought it could feel festive yet totalitarian at the same time, so we incorporated it into the image. There’s an element of mask-wearing that’s appealing to us (artists Cindy Sherman’s lovely portrait photography comes to mind). Fixed identity can get incredibly boring, so why not don masks unapologetically and play like someone else for a while? This may be ridiculous to unpack, but it is absolutely elemental in rock music.”So, yeah, mask-wearing, and watching a series of attempts to break new, teen pop stars during the Thanksgiving Parade in NYC made us think it’d be fun to do a really processed look The parade float stops and so-and-so sings their new hit single wearing a cute sweater while giant gingerbread people dance around —except we imagined us falling out of an airplane festively over New York City to our deaths.”

Happy Holidays,
Matt & Melissa, Glass Taxi

LYRICS

I want to kill a tree in my house
I want to kill a tree in my house
I want to cut it down in the woods and strap it up with lights
I want to kill a tree in my house

I want to wait in line at the mall
I want to wait in line at the mall
I want to lose my friends and family and look for them for hours
I want to wait in line at the mall

Christmastime is here
Gonna do it hard this year
Gonna wash it down with good cheer
Gonna do it hard

I want to give a gift card in a bag
I want to give a gift card in a bag
I want to spend more on the pretty bag than I do on your gift card
I want to give a gift card in a bag

I want to see all of my family at once
I want to see all of my family at once
I want to hide in the laundry room when they ask me about my job
I want to see all of my family at once

Christmastime is here
Gonna do it hard this year
Gonna wash it down with good cheer
Gonna do it hard every year

Winter snow falls down seeming to beckon me:
”You can get out of this — steal a car, drive real far, get a new life working at an airport bar."*

I want to kill a tree in my house

MORE ON GLASS TAXI

Haunted by wanderings, bus station speakers, strange taxi radio stations, music of the past, TV commercials, local pop music, and those faint songs that fade into static, our music is born from a desire to bite back at the omnivore's dilemma and open the gates to songs of all forms — distilling memory, intuition, and all the curiosities encountered wandering this strange planet of ours into song, visual, and experience. Nothing is off the table.

The intention behind our band is to deny no inkling or inspiration and to write what comes. Our favorite albums growing up were ones where every track is different and you get an amazing journey through sonic landscapes (EP - Fiery Furnaces, 69 Loves Songs - Magnetic Fields, Revolver - Beatles, The Who Sell Out - The Who, The Mollusk - Ween, etc.) a run through emotions and moods and ideas, both serious and silly.

There’s also an element of mask-wearing that’s appealing (artists Cindy Sherman’s lovely portrait photography comes to mind). Fixed identity can get incredibly boring, so why not don the mask unapologetically and play like someone else for a while? This may be ridiculous to unpack, but it is absolutely elemental in rock music.

CREDITS

Glass Taxi are Matt Norris & Melissa Burgess

Christmastime is Here (I Want to Kill a Tree in My House) was recorded and mixed by Matt Norris & Melissa Burgess (Glass Taxi)

Mastered by Fred Miller

EVEN MORE ON GLASS TAXI IF YOU
NEED MORE COPY OR SOMETHING

Songwriting, for us, has been inspired by time living & traveling abroad. Our music listening went from a deliberate pressing of “play” to a matter of complete happenstance — catching songs in transport vans, shops, and on the street. Factors of language and catchiness come to bear in how pop music sticks, and unmoored from our usual contexts we began to delight in the randomness of transmission; this playlist was built from complete chance. Each of the songs we release this year will ultimately play through that filter: Eschewing a dominant sound that impacts every track, for something more curated & exploratory. Something that translates in the immediate.

We want to build a kind of a Wunderkammer of songs and sounds. A Wunderkammer is a cabinet for curiosities, a place to collect otherwise unrelated fascinations, a catalog of wonders. The point is simply to follow our most intense musical obsessions ruthlessly.

Friends since high school, Matt Norris and Melissa Burgess started sending songs back and forth during 2020. Melissa was a portrait painter in Atlanta when she began collaborating with Matt long-distance, pulling from her love of songwriting and art, as well as her experience as a classically-trained pianist. Matt was a fixture in the Atlanta music scene, playing in groups across genres and opening for bands as varied as Deerhunter, Mugison, and, randomly, Mumford & Sons. In 2015 he sold all his possessions (except musical instruments) and left the States, living in Berlin, Krakow, Taichung, and London, before settling in Poznan, Poland