A Toolbox Christmas

Repressing. Listen to your favorite carols played on your favorite hand and power tools! Here, at last, is a holiday album created especially for woodworkers, home improvers, and lovers of fine implements.

What could be more Christmassy than goofy novelty record albums of goofy novelty songs you've heard all your life and have a distinctly love-hate relationship with? This wonderfully horrible record combines all the sounds that a well-stocked, Tim Allen-style tool shop can produce, if one is so inclined to use a drill press, bag of nails, saw, ratchet, table saw, and vacuum as musical instruments. Together with traditional wind instruments, mandolin, and a dulcimer, Phillips plays the carpenter's greatest yuletide hits. As the liner notes very correctly state, "Tchaikovsky's beloved 'Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy' may never sound the same to you again once you've experienced Phillips's ensemble of antique hand drill, mandolin, anvil, T-square, level, and pipes." This is a great novelty gift, particularly for that relative you're not necessarily fond of. --Mike McGonigal