CREATING a Christmas album had always been something of an ambition for Retrospective Soundtrack Players frontman Kyle Evans.

“If I could tally up the most played album from my life it would be Phil Spector’s A Christmas Gift For You,” he says from his home just outside Winchester ahead of their headline slot at the Midnight Campfire Christmas Concert curated by songwriter and Juice 107.2 DJ Chris T-T. “For 11 months of the year I don’t listen to it, but every Christmas I put it on at least 20 times.”

Having already created original soundtracks for the Paul Newman movie Cool Hand Luke and J D Salinger’s novel The Catcher In The Rye, Evans focused on two Christmas favourites for what would be his band’s third album.

It’s A Wonderful Christmas Carol combines elements from the Jimmy Stewart seasonal classic It’s A Wonderful Life and Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol “Obviously they both have very similar redemption themes,” says Evans. “I thought it would be fun to weave between the two stories, with added bits thrown in from my own experience.”

So there are seasonal offerings packed full with sleigh bells, plus guest appearances by Xtra Mile labelmates Chris T-T, Frank Turner and Ben Marwood as the Ghosts Of Christmas Past, Present and Yet To Come respectively.

And there are songs like It’s A Wonderful Life – a self-deprecating tour through The Retrospective Soundtrack Players’ career to date, referring to boxes of unsold albums and getting rid of a banjo only a month before Mumford And Sons appeared.

“Half the songs on the album could be transferable to play all year round,” says Evans, referring to closing track No Man Is Poor Who Has Friends as the best song he has ever written – and something the band has performed on tour for the last 18 months.

Evans wrote the album in July 2013, during one of the hottest weeks on record.

Unfortunately he had to wait until December 2014 before it could be released.

“You have a window where you have to release it and if you miss it you have to wait for a year,” he says.

“Radiohead could probably have recorded a Christmas album in July and got it out by December – I’d be interested in hearing it – but we had to get ours pressed months and months before. You can’t put a Christmas album out in March!”

Also on the bill are Tom Williams and Salter Cane.

Starts 8pm, tickets £9/£7. Visit thebrunswick.net/buy-tickets

Duncan Hall