Sunturns or Why We Need More Christmas Bands

It’s minus 15 degrees outside. Sporadic snowflakes are slowly falling. 350 people are crammed into a turn of the century cinema in the centre of Oslo. Sunturns are about to take the stage for their annual celebration of Christmas at Parkteatret, and the crowd are clearly feeling festive. 

Sunturns are a Norwegian indie-pop supergroup who have existed since 2012, made up of members of Making Marks, The Little Hands of Asphalt, Flight Mode, The Einar Stray Orchestra, Monzano, My Little Pony, Elva, Mildfire… the list goes on. At this point, I feel like a band can’t exist in southern Norway without a member of Sunturns being in it. The fun thing is that the only music that Sunturns make are Christmas songs. They’ve released three LPs, ‘Christmas’, ‘Christmas II’, and (you guessed it) ‘Christmas III’. The songs cover everything from wintertime sadness, to the fun of Christmas, to the fact that Christmas is the point where things start getting brighter again (ie. the time when the sun turns… get it?).

We got the opportunity to not only play with Sunturns back in 2018 in Oslo, but also got to record our Christmas song ‘Christmas in July’ with Sjur Lyseid from the band at the same time. There was something utterly electric about the show. It felt like a moment of pure joy – an utterly cathartic release of festive happiness. It’s a feeling that I hope everyone gets to experience at least once in their life.

What I love about Sunturns is that even though they’ve confined themselves to only writing about Christmas, the breadth of topics is the same as any other band. Not only that, but they joyfully bounce between genres, and don’t confine themselves to one lead singer, either (the advantage of having three lead singers in the band). I mean, yes they’re a Christmas band, but since I randomly picked up the ‘Christmas’ and ‘Christmas II’ double vinyl in 2016, they’ve firmly become one of my favourite bands.

It probably doesn’t hurt that I absolutely love Christmas anyway. There’s such a deep well of material to mine, from feeling dislocated when you’re away from home, to mining the nostalgia of early years, to Christmas heartbreak, to just talking about festive things. Why aren’t there more Christmas supergroups?

As a Christmas music aficionado (that is totally a thing), there are so many good Christmas songs that don’t fit within the traditional oeuvre of Christmas. Frightened Rabbit’s ‘It’s Christmas So We’ll Stop’. Tellison’s ‘Snow (Don’t Tell The Truth This Christmas)’. Admiral Fallow’s ‘Isn’t This World Enough’. The list goes on and on.

In the meantime (or realistically, before I accidentally add a new side project of a DIY emo Christmas supergroup), At least we have Sunturns, a delightfully Norwegian indie-pop band that I hope continue writing silly, heartbreaking, beautiful Christmas songs until they’re all well into their eighties.

God jul. 

Top Sunturns Tracks for the Uninitiated 

• Hallelujah (Christmas Is Here) - The song that accidentally revealed to my son that Santa doesn’t exist. It also references Eminem, which I think is a first for a Christmas song.
• The Day Before The Day - Sjur played this for us in the studio on the beatdown piano and my heart burst into a million pieces. It’s such a beautifully delicate song with some truly heartwrenching lyrics.
• First Winter - A beautiful song about the feeling of re-experiencing Christmas with a young family. Nobody has made SAD lamps sounds so cute.
• Byen Er Tom - I’m an absolute sucker for beautiful non-English songs. The Norwegian language shouldn’t sound so gorgeous, but Ola makes it sound like the most poetic language ever invented.
• Sunni - Einar’s voice is like butter. This piano ballad feels like it has existed forever, and that little whistle melody just lifts my heart and makes me feel like I need a hot toddy straight away.