Skip Mariah: These are our music critic’s contenders for the best Christmas albums
The sounds of the season. Depending on your temperament for the times, holiday music either triggers December cheer or detonates that moment when Christmas sentimentalism goes nuclear.
We get it. It’s been a black hole of a year, so mustering holiday spirit has become an Olympic event for many. Hopefully, this will help. A look at 10 recommended recordings of Yuletide music. Five are brand new, the others are classics that have remained available and in print (with one key exception) through the years, returning annually like Marley’s Ghost. They may not erase the pervading dreariness of 2020, but hopefully their music will help let some genuine light and cheer in for the holidays.
The debuts
Andrew Bird: “Hark!”
Far and away, the finest new holiday platter of 2020. Bird is a natural for a winter album of stark, delicate soundscapes. Take the way plucked pizzicato violin and a hushed vocal choir give new life to John Cale’s “Andalucia” or how surprisingly cheery his wonderment makes John Prine’s “Souvenirs” sound. Then there is the beautifully tripped out take on “White Christmas.” Wonderfully distinctive and refreshingly offbeat.
Kacey Musgraves: “The Kacey Musgraves Christmas Show”
A new record of sorts, this is the CD/vinyl debut of the digitally released 2019 soundtrack to the Grammy-winning country stylist’s Amazon Prime special. The retro seasonal feel is inviting with all-star duets dominating the repertoire. Still, Musgraves’ 2016 studio holiday album “A Very Kacey Christmas,” highlighted by her update of “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas,” is preferable.
Goo Goo Dolls: “It’s Christmas All Over”
This one is a serious surprise. The veteran New York rockers settle deep behind mainstream pop lines for a holiday record that takes its title from a 1992 Tom Petty tune (“Christmas All Over Again,” which kicks off this outing). But the very sobering original “This is Christmas” and an especially bittersweet “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” add a cautious but necessary gravitas to the holiday party mood.
The Bird and the Bee: “Put Up the Lights”
Another curious oddity where the indie pop duo of Inara George and Greg Kurstin place a sleek and, at times, almost summery sheen on holiday sounds, right down to a multi-tracked vocal pastiche take of the “Hallelujah Chorus.” Leave it to a Dave Grohl cameo, though, to bust things up by supplying a groove that makes “Little Drummer Boy” sound like Led Zeppelin’s “When the Levee Breaks.”
High Plains Drifters: “Santa! Bring My Girlfriend Back!”
Stumbled upon this single by accident. Ahead of its sophomore album release in 2021, this Americana-and-more troupe offer a holiday tune for the times, a cowboy-on-the-skids confession with a mambo chaser called “Santa! Bring My Girlfriend Back!” It takes country heartbreak all the way to the North Pole. A wonderful novelty diversion.
The classics
Vince Guaraldi: “A Charlie Brown Christmas”
By now, either you get the mix of jazz playfulness and childlike fancy that pervades pianist Guaraldi’s Peanuts mix of holiday originals and classics or you don’t. For those that do, this 1965 recording is more than a mere nostalgia ride. It serves as a delicate and, no pun intended, animated view of the season that remains unspoiled and timeless.
Booker T and the MGs: “In the Christmas Spirit”
This remains my musical refuge during the holidays. First issued in 1966, it presents a dozen familiar Christmas staples slowed to a simmering R&B cool by Booker T and the MGs. The record may, in fact, be too slow for some. But for others, hearing Christmas music tempered by the Stax Records house band offers the ultimate seasonal chill out.
John Fahey: “The New Possibility”
The acoustic music of guitarist of John Fahey, a mash-up of regional roots inspirations and his own articulate cunning, is groundbreaking to this day. But never has his musical vision been better displayed than on 1968’s “The New Possibility,” a sparse and profoundly soulful collection of holiday carols performed on acoustic steel-string guitar.
Los Straitjackets: “Complete Christmas Songbook”
The masked men of instrumental surf and twang packed together all their seasonal recordings – a 2002 album, a 2009 EP and assorted singles) into a single CD/double vinyl set in 2018 that will surely add some hipness to your holidays, from the calypso lounge version of “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer” to the suitably cool Yule of “Silver Bells.”
Duke Pearson: “Merry Ole Soul”
My Christmas wish for 2020 is that this wonderful set of piano solo, trio and quartet recordings gets re-released before this time next year. Cut in 1969 for Blue Note Records, the vanguard jazz label that devotes considerable attention to its back catalog, “Merry Ole Soul” remains a diamond in the career of this underappreciated pianist, composer and producer. A lone CD copy of this gem on Amazon marketplace is currently going for over $900. A digital MP3 copy sells for a mere $5.
This story was originally published December 9, 2020 at 9:49 AM.