25 Days of Christmas Albums: The New Possibility ✧ John Fahey ✧ 1968

The New Possibility is one of my favorites. Fahey’s steel guitar arrangements are spare and at times melancholy. Some of the songs are incredibly brief, puzzling out one simple tune a couple times. This is a structure that Sufjan Stevens mirrors on his more recent Songs for Christmas.

The recording style is close enough to hear the buzzing of the strings; it feels intimate. This album at times can sound peaceful and reconciled, at other moments as cold and aloof as a gutter icicle. Every once in a while Fahey gives off a little Les Paul style flair in his playing, the guitar work living somewhere in between Appalachia and Nashville.
Purchased at Mole’s Record Exchange in Cincinnati. Available for streaming just about everywhere.