Just in time for this weekend's holiday-season merriment and all the Christmas parties happening, the Brantley Family Band's "2011 Xmas Album" is hitting inboxes today. This is the eighth edition from Bull City guitarist Jim Brantley and friends, with four tracks highlighted by faithful readings of the Beach Boys' "Little Saint Nick" and Vincent Guaraldi's "Charlie Brown" theme "Christmas Time Is Here."

They've got it set up so that you can download previous years' songs, too -- 36 tracks of holiday-season goodness, perfect for playing at your Christmas party. God bless us, every one!

As promised last month, here is a link to the 2010 edition of the Brantley Family Band's Christmas Album, which you can download for free. It's an annual tradition for Bull City guitarist Jim Brantley -- although the status of Bull City is unclear because Brantley lives in California nowadays. He moved west over the summer to take a job with Apple, but he'll be back in the Triangle to play a Bull City show at Durham's Motorco Music Hall on Dec. 29.

Meantime, Brantley reports that he also recently joined what he calls "a (classic) country band" in California, to his own bemusement: "Why I needed to move 3,000 miles from the South to finally play country music I'll never know, but I guess the world works in mysterious ways."

'Deed it do.

Even though Thanksgiving isn't for another week, Christmas decorations have already been up in stores for what seems like a couple of months. And the Christmas holiday season will get its unofficial "early" start in the Triangle this weekend, with Saturday's annual Downtown Raleigh Christmas Parade. But an altogether cooler local tradition is the Brantley Family Band's Christmas album, a longtime labor of love for Bull City guitarist Jim Brantley's family and friends.

This year's model will be the seventh one they've done, and they'll start recording next week on Black Friday -- "in protest of over-consumption, shopping malls (and) rushing the season." The 2010 edition should surface sometime in December; I'll keep you posted. Meantime, dig this gem from last year.

In recent years, the Brantley Family Band Christmas Album has become one of the coolest holiday traditions in local music. The Brantleys, Bull City guitarist Jim and his wife Heidi, get together with friends to record a handful of Christmas songs, which they send around as a Christmas card.

The fifth edition is online, highlighted by a rockin' take on "Silver Bells." Check out this year's model, and the 20 songs from prior years going back to 2004, right here. Your holiday spirit will be soaring in no time.