Julian Koster is part of the Elephant 6 collective, and his The Singing Saw at Christmastime is the seasonal exploitation record at it finest. Rather than have dogs bark or cats meow the carols, he coaxes them out of saws to lonely effect. The high, whining saw sounds like a wintry wind howling around your house on a late December evening, only without the fury. The songs move at such patient tempos that – like the wind – you can wonder if you imagined a song was ever there. The melancholic will find this their Christmas album – or songs from it, anyway. So far, I’ve found 15 or so minutes all I could take at one time before the saw in its otherworldly glory started to grate. Tolerances may vary.