Ho ho ho! What new holiday music does Santa have in his bag?
At the top of the list there’s the duo She & Him with the appropriately titled A Very She & Him Christmas (Merge). Zooey Deschanel’s blank-sounding, 3 AM-and-the-bar’s-closing vocals prove perfectly suited to traditional seasonal tunes. “The Christmas Waltz” will make you wistful; “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” will make you sad; and “Baby It’s Cold Outside” will make you laugh, because Deschanel and M. Ward switch gender roles on what has become known among the younger set as “the date-rape song.”
The weirdest holiday release, by far, is Scott Weiland’s The Most Wonderful Time of the Year (Atlantic). Weiland’s singing has always had an appealingly mannered side, but it’s hard to know how to take the STP and Velvet Revolver dude as a flat-out crooner. Some of the songs work well, including a reggae arrangement of “O Holy Night,” but on others, Weiland sounds, well, distracted. (And heavily auto-tuned, of course.) But since that’s part of his MO, this is a good bet if you know someone who likes Christmas music and whacked-out frontmen.
In a more traditional mode is sometime fiddler, sometime violinist (see what I did there?) Mark O’Connor’s An Appalachian Christmas (OMAC Records). O’Connor has a lot of cool friends, and a bunch of them show up to sing and play on this lovely album: Renée Fleming, Jane Monheit, Yo-Yo Ma, James Taylor and Alison Krauss. The various genres they represent should give you a good idea of the album’s musical range.
If you know someone who likes old-school Nashville-style singers (and if you don’t, why not?), then Mandy Barnett’s Winter Wonderland (Rounder) has a classic honky-tonk sound that pleases. Really, she’s terrific—and she’s the only person other than Brenda Lee you’ll ever want to hear sing “Jingle Bell Rock.”
Lyle Lovett just released Songs for the Season (Lost Highway), a three-song EP that’s available via download only. There’s one wry original, “The Girl With the Holiday Smile,” and two covers, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” and Vince Guaraldi’s “Christmastime Is Here.” Lovett is joined on the covers by the very fine Texas-based jazz singer Kat Edmonson.
It wouldn’t be Christmas without a couple of worthwhile reissues. Tony Bennett’s The Classic Christmas Album (Columbia Legacy) is a “greatest hits” culled from his many holiday records recorded for Columbia over the last six or seven decades. All the usual holiday suspects are included; his version of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” is one of the most beautiful.
Finally, the 1960s were a golden age of slightly nutty, overarranged instrumental music and a golden age of Christmas records. A prime example of both is Sony Classical’s reissue of Andre Kostelanetz’ 1963 album Wonderland of Christmas. Swirling strings, eccentric solos and a devotion to melody: It’s all there is this very tasty, rum-soaked musical fruitcake.
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