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The Week According to Prefix: 12.3.10

12:51 p.m. · December 3, 2010 · by Daniel Kolitz

Well, December is finally upon us, and on the Internet (where it never gets cold, and nobody goes hungry!) that generally means two things: endlessly contested year-end lists and mediocre Christmas songs. There was no lack of the latter this week. In what has to be a first, the Walkmen got downright jolly covering Lindsey Buckingham's "Holiday Road" -- and in the process ended up sounding like a ska band. John Cale's "Child's Christmas in Wales" may not have much to do with Christmas, but that didn't stop Superchunk from turning it into a fuzz-ballad that could've been lifted straight from your Christmas '93 mixtape. Coldplay brought a Christmas original to the feast, and our Andrew Winistorfer, in the true holiday spirit, called it "the best song they've done in five years." All that's missing now is a Yo La Tengo Hanukkah song. (Their Hanukkah residency at Maxwell's -- along with Hanukkah itself -- started earlier this week, by the way.)

Is there any image more holiday-seasony than that of the loving family huddled around the fireplace, perusing their publication of choice's year-end list? There's mom, curled up around her iPad, thumbing through NPR's list ("Have you kids heard of the Deerhunter?"). There's big sis, just back from a study abroad in London and totally obsessed with the NME ("These New Puritans should have takenevery spot on the list!"). There's your angry little bro, flipping through Decibel's metal-heavy top 40 ("Leave me alone"). There's your free-spirit aunt, in from Nashville for the weekend to see a Mumford and Sons show and totally pleased with their inexplicable No. 3 placement on Paste's list. And there you are, refreshing Prefix's homepage every 10 minutes waiting for what we have to say (don't worry, it'll be up soon enough).

The carbon copy sameness of most major year-end lists can make the reliably safe Grammy nominations seem almost exciting. Ivan Mitchell did a crack job predicting the noms earlier in the week: four out of five of his Album of the Year prophecies came true, including his wildcard pick. ("If there's going to be one crazy out-of-left-field nod here," he wrote, "it'll probably be Arcade Fire's The Suburbs." How right he was!) You can peruse the actual nominations over here.

Shut out of both the Grammys (unsurprisingly) and most of the year-end lists so far (kind of surprisingly) has been Wolf Parade--who announced earlier this week that they'd be going on "indefinite hiatus." As usual, one Canadian indie-rock supergroup disappears, and another springs up in its wake. Like, immediately. Hours after Wolf Parade's announcement, Sup Pop (to whom Wolf Parade is signed) revealed that they'd added to their roster Mister Heavenly -- a band that as of press time is roughly half Canadian (Michael Cera is on bass, and Islands' Nick Thorburn is also involved). They're gearing up for a 2011 release, and it probably won't be nominated for a Grammy.