You know what holiday doesn’t have nearly enough songs in its honor? Thanksgiving. It has all the love, friendship, and familial bonhomie (and, of course, familial anxiety) of Christmas without its attendant religious baggage or gift-giving pressure. Now that most of us have moved beyond telling fairy tales about this continent’s early white colonizers, it’s becoming a near-perfect holiday. Julia Francis, I’m guessing, would agree. “Thanksgiving Song” is an appropriately warm and sweet ode to the holiday, starting with a long list of things to be thankful for, before seguing into gustatory delights such as baked sweet potato and marshmallow fluff, then pivoting to the deeper joys to be found with friends and family (however one personally defines those terms). The arrangement is somehow both lush and quirky, backing up Julia’s voice with piano, percussion, and an ever-expanding palette of musical colors (is that theremin?) that beautifully supports Julia’s voice without overcrowding the message. In addition to the sweet and happy, the chorus – which is, cleverly, a little bit different every time it comes around – acknowledges the darker side of life and offers the song itself as a sort of balm. Julia closes, “Thanksgiving song, when everything’s wrong / and all that you own are the things you’ve outgrown / except for your soul and your flesh blood and bone.”
Of course this holiday-themed volume of Ball of Wax doesn’t come out until the Saturday after Thanksgiving – when Julia and her band will join us at Conor Byrne – but I heartily recommend adding this song to your Thanksgiving playlist this year and henceforth, if only for the conversational prompts. I could think of much worse things to say during an awkward or unpleasant family moment than “Nothing is wrong with the way that you feel, if it’s what’s real.”