[1] The Last Month of the Year is considered their most musically ambitious and also one of the Trio's least known.

Nick Reynolds stated in an interview for the liner notes of The Guard Years: "It wasn't your standard Christmas album.

Dave (Guard) brought in a lot of the arrangements with stuff like bouzouki instrumentation; Buckwheat (David Wheat, the Trio's bassist) played some wonderful gut-string guitar.

David (Guard) was responsible for a lot of that album, but we all brought things in... Musically, it came off very well; it just didn't sell.

[1] In his Allmusic review, critic David A. Milberg called The Last Month of the Year "An essential part of any Christmas album collection, these are true Christmas folk songs, from spirituals to Old English rounds.