Slow Owls don’t just enter the Christmas-song arena — they glide in like wide-eyed observers from a frost-dusted parallel universe, clutching a festive mini-epic stitched together with nostalgia, melodic ambition, and just the right amount of eccentric sparkle. Counting Down To Christmas is the duo’s debut single, but you’d swear they’ve been quietly plotting this one for years. Turns out it actually “fell out of an afternoon’s face-to-face songwriting around an upright piano” — the kind of origin story that already feels like its own Christmas short film.
Shropshire’s Alfie Edwards (frontman of The Bartells) and Welsh producer/multi-instrumentalist Jim Williams (of Additional Moog) aren’t strangers to big songwriting. Edwards brings the emotional heft, Williams the widescreen production brain — together they give us a Christmas single built like a three-act odyssey. The press notes call it a “mini suite,” and for once that’s not PR overreach. The song shifts and swells like someone flicking through the memory-stained doors of an advent calendar — which is fitting, seeing as the final chorus lands at precisely 25 bars by design.
The opening passage is all piano-led introspection, a candlelit reflection on Christmases gone — the kind where the ghosts are warm, not warning. Then comes the lift: a chant-like, arms-around-shoulders centre section that channels the communal heart of the season without tumbling into cliché. By the time the track bursts into its Spectoresque finale, the whole thing explodes like a snow-globe shaken by Roy Wood after one too many Sherries. There are cheeky nods to Paul McCartney and George Michael in the melodic turns, but the delivery remains unmistakably the world of Slow Owls: thoughtful, melodic, slightly off-kilter, and subtly moving.
A pair of heavyweight guests sharpen the magic: Mark Hooper on drums gives the chorus its triumphant stomp, while Los Angeles sax icon Ron Dziubla (whose CV features Joe Bonamassa, Chris Isaak and more) swoops in with a warm, golden-hour glow that lifts the ending into proper cinematic territory.
Where most Christmas singles grab for glitter, Slow Owls reach for memory — the ache, the joy, the loss, the renewal. It’s the sound of two seasoned songwriters deciding that if they’re going to make a Christmas track, they’re going to make one with craft, quirks and heart.
And the best part? This is only chapter one. They’re already working on new material for 2026, promising a shift toward angular indie rock and experimental synth-pop — a far cry from sleigh bells, yet exactly the kind of left-turn that makes Slow Owls such an intriguing new project.
A Christmas debut that truly lands. Bittersweet, ambitious and quietly beautiful — Slow Owls might just have delivered this year’s alternative festive essential.
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