[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiWVkIMTm0Q]
Well before Arcade Fire won a Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 2011, the group (well, most of the group) recorded a rough-around-the-edges Christmas EP live at a party in 2001. The tracks on the EP are primarily Christmas standards like “The Christmas Song,” “O Holy Night,” and “Jingle Bell Rock,” while the last track, “A Very Arcade Xmas” is more or less a jam session. Rumor has it that the group then hand-distributed the EP to friends as a DIY Christmas gift and it eventually made its way to the web where it has been passed around by Arcade Fire catalogue completists and fervent fans. Though the rollicking, possibly drunken, performance is not commercially available, it’s well worth tracking down on the Internet.
Here’s Arcade Fire’s “The Christmas Song (Roasting Chestnuts).”