Brooklyn-via-Buffalo songwriter DM Stith entered the Asthmatic Kitty stable via the design work on Shara Worden, aka My Brightest Diamond, albums and the vocals and piano he contributed to her Bring Me The Workhorse. He released the Curtain Speech EP earlier this month (12/9). Stith’s full-length debut Heavy Ghost, which includes no songs from the EP but does include appearances from Worden and Sufjan Stevens, is out 3/10 on Asthmatic Kitty. “Ecstatic Only Static Peace (Peace to Me),” though, is a holiday song he wrote especially for this yuletide ‘Gum Drop. We asked him about it.

What’s this song about?
I imagined a cartoon Christmas special like the ones I grew up watching, and in this one, there’s a musical number featuring a dilapidated old house who is singing about a dream of being dressed in Christmas lights. For him it’s like the ultimate act of honor. So I imagine this old house watching the other houses on the street get all decked up for Christmas and he’s left without, no glory in the winter weather. I think David Bowie is playing the voice of the old house.

Any Christmas plans?
I’m heading to upstate NY to celebrate Christmas with my family. They live way out in the country, 45 minutes from a Wal*Mart, in a town with no traffic lights and only one restaurant (which is Chinese). So that’s the plan, although this plan has been made more complicated by a suddenly incapacitated Ford Escort. I have a dead car in my driveway and hopes for a plane ticket to Buffalo. Holiday travel always feels so desperate. Why are holidays always rackets of desperation?

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Heavy Ghost is out 3/10 on Asthmatic Kitty. This song isn’t on it.