Song of the Day 12/15: The Roches, “Deck the Halls”

Guest post by Nathan Arizona

WXPN voters couldn’t find even one song by the Roches to place on the station’s just-concluded listeners survey of the 885 best songs by women. But the harmonizing sisters are going to sing a couple of Christmas carols for you today anyway, through the time-traveling magic of YouTube.

The Roches had a moment in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s — a small one in the mainstream but pretty big in the burgeoning world of new wave. Their quirky music wasn’t really new wave (or punk), but it did appeal to that offbeat sensibility. It was more like folk, but it wasn’t folk either. What they knew about folk music they had learned as kids watching TV in their parents’ New Jersey home.

Robert Fripp of King Crimson was impressed enough to produce their first album, adding a few electronic touches of his own. The New York Times compared the Roches’ entrance on the New York scene with the splash Bruce Springsteen made a few years earlier. OK, things didn’t turn out quite as well for the Roches, but they made albums in some combination of sisters until Maggie died of breast cancer in 2017, and they delighted in-the-know crowds at live shows.

One of these was a Christmas performance at New York City’s Bottom Line club in 1990, not many years after they had been busking carols on the streets of New York City. Among the songs at the Bottom Line was “Deck the Halls,” a warhorse that dates to 16th-century Wales. It began as an instrumental aire, then Scotsman Thomas Oliphant added the familiar words to it in 1862. He didn’t have to work hard for the fa la la’s, a conventional substitute for actual lyrics for the many rounds in such music.

“Deck the Halls” is one of those Christmas songs that isn’t really about Christmas. Those Welshmen decorated their halls and trolled their ancient carols on New Year’s Eve. Yes, they “trolled” them, which means they sang them joyfully in a rolling voice. Some people sing “toll.” Maybe they think trolls are only for social media.

Here is the Roches’ freewheeling version. Maggie, on the right, was the oldest and main songwriter. She and Terre, the blond soprano on the far left, started out as a duo, made an album that went nowhere, then found success when they added their younger sister, live-wire Suzzy.

They also did “We Three Kings” at the Bottom Line. This was the first American carol to gain widespread attention. It was written by an Episcopalian minister in 1857 for a Christmas pageant at the seminary he attended in New York City.

This was actually the opening song at the Bottom Line performance. It has sometimes been associated with a Middle Eastern sound, which the Roches lean into.

The Roches blended with two-other well-known music families. Suzzy had a daughter, singer Lucy Wainwright Roche, by the folk singer Louden Wainwright III. He also had two children, Rufus and Martha Wainwright, by his wife Kate McGarrigle of the folk-singing McGarrigle Sisters. So Rufus and Martha, who also have singing careers, are half-siblings to Lucy Wainwright Roche.