Adebisi Shank – This is the Christmas Album of a band called Adebisi Shank

Back in January, I decided to start Swim Selects as a way to keep myself accountable. I figured that my own weekly column would keep me on a schedule and force me to write regularly. Not only would this help me keep up with new releases, but it would also prevent me from overthinking everything and psyching myself out, as I so often do. Overall, it has been a beautiful experiment, and it’s a trip to be writing one of the last entries of the year. Given that we’re just a couple of days away from Christmas, it only feels right to theme this week’s entry to something holiday-themed. 

My mind reeled looking at my 2025 Christmas playlist. Perhaps Sharon Van Etten, Fleet Foxes, or Jeff Tweedy of the recent Oh What Fun soundtrack? Maybe Dove Ellis, or Cory Hanson, one of the recent “Christmas Mentioned, but Not Christmas” songs? In the end, I had to go with my gut, one of the most delightful and batshit batches of holiday tunes all year: This is the Christmas Album of a band called Adebisi Shank.

That’s right, after an almost-decade-long hiatus, the Irish Rock band returned earlier this year with a brand new EP, and I was beside myself. Coming back with new music after a decade away is cool, but coming back with a Christmas album after a decade away is hilarious. The thing to know about Adebesi Shank’s Christmas album is that it’s Brown as fuck. 

For those not in the know, “Brownness” is a concept associated with Ween that essentially means music that’s “fucked up in a good way.” It’s kind of a ‘you know it when you see it’ type thing, but anyone familiar with the huffed-up sounds of The Pod or tracks like “Don't Laugh (I Love You)” will know what I’m talking about. While this term is primarily attached to Ween, plenty of other artists have tapped into the brown aura, whether they realize it or not. I’d argue bands like Modest Mouse, Butthole Surfers, Primus, and Guided By Voices have all made songs that qualify as Brown at various points across their careers. By the fourth song on Adebesi Shank’s Christmas album, I realized the Irish trio could easily land among these ranks.

What’s really funny is how well the band works their way up to the weirdness. After all, you can’t just jump straight into fucked-up Christmas tunes, you gotta acclimate your audience to everything, then gradually turn up the heat like a frog in a pot. 

As such, the first song is a beautiful piano-based rendition of “Christmas Time Is Here,” featuring vocals from MayKay, an Irish musician from Fight Like Apes who also put out her own self-titled solo record earlier this year. As traditional as this all sounds, make no mistake, it’s a rug-pull that anyone who’s listened to the Barenaked Ladies’ Christmas album will be familiar with. Second, ya got “In Dulci Jubilo,” a cover of the Mike Oldfield interpretation of the German Christmas carol. By this point, the band is in a bit more familiar bass, drums, and guitar configuration, topped off with some nice shredding. By track three, we’re deep in a wacked-out auto-tuned version of “Wonderful Christmastime,” complete with a breakbeat and bass-boosted crescendos that are liable to rattle your speakers off the shelf. 

It’s track four where the band lets the dosed eggnog take full effect with a pitched-up rendition of “Merry Christmas Everyone,” punctuated by stoned laughter and synthy burbles. They keep things similarly zany on “Feliz Navidad,” which feels like it could have fit in on La Cucaracha, and sounds like it was recorded off a landline phone. There are plenty of other weird moments and offbeat interpretations on this beautiful, fucked-up Scotchgard trip of an album that are best experienced firsthand. As a Christmas Music Respecter, it’s exciting to see artists willing to bring such out-there energy to these songs, then proceed to beat the piss out of them until they're nearly unrecognizable. That’s what Christmas is all about.