“No matter how long I live in California, Christmas always means winter in Chicago and the often bitter wind blowing off the lake.” - Jim Silvers

An apropos sentiment from an artist who regularly goes by the name Windy City Jim. Silvers’s two songs are exceptional alternatives to the usual holiday sentiment and fare.

“Wait ‘til Next Year” is a mid-tempo honky-tonk number that spins a boozy little yarn about drinking away the holiday alongside the like-minded in a Windy City watering hole. The B-side “Streets of Christmas” is a melancholy country ditty that juxtaposes Silvers’s fond remembrances of his childhood holidays spent in the Big City with his vision of a more contemporaneous Christmas season overwrought with greed and consumption.

If you’re looking for something a little croony, a little country, and a whole lot of different to spin during the holiday season, you can’t do much better than the one-two punch of Jim Silvers’s “Wait ‘til Next Year” and “Streets of Christmas.”