Our iPods are stuffed with 2012’s bounty of Christmas albums, naughty and nice. Postmedia News entertainment elves worked hard to let you know which ones deserve your dough and which would be better suited to stoking the yule log.
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Dine Alone Records
Holiday Sampler
Rating: 5 out of 5
The lineup of artists featured on this year’s Dine Alone Records holiday sampler should give you a clue about the success of independent music labels in recent years.
They’ve managed to lure such big names as Marilyn Manson and U.K. popster Kate Nash onto the Toronto-based label.
This isn’t typical FM radio Christmas fare either, with nary a “real” Christmas song to be found. Those who listen to music on independent labels are typically looking for something a little outside radio pop — and this provides just that. It’s fresh.
–Jeanette Stewart/Postmedia News
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Cee Lo’s Magic Moment
Cee Lo Green
Rating: 4 out of 5
His song choices might be predictable but Cee Lo Green’s voice and retro flair mean his Christmas album is worth adding to the shelf.
His versions of What Christmas Means to Me and Donny Hathaway’s This Christmas can’t touch the originals, but he adds enough originality to make them worth a listen.
Oddly enough, Green’s collaboration with the Muppets (complete with “Mahna Mahnas”) is one of the album’s best. With its big, loud brass and percussion, the song captures the childlike exuberance of the season.
–Stephanie McKay/Postmedia News
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Hey Rosetta
A Cup of Kindness Yet
Rating: 3 out of 5
Newfoundland-based indie rockers Hey Rosetta have had a great year, which included a performance on the 2012 Juno awards.
But the indie-rock lifestyle isn’t always glamorous, as you can glean from Carry Me Home, the first track on their Christmas EP, which talks about spending the holiday in a cheap hotel on tour.
With that said, all that hard travelling has been good for these musicians, who have produced a short but sweet blend of earnestly delivered holiday songs.
–Jeanette Stewart/Postmedia News
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Holidays Rule
Various Artists
Rating: 3. 5 out of 5
Compilation albums are the White Elephant gift exchange of holiday records. You never know what you’re going to get.
Holidays Rule, luckily, has more gooey caramel centres than icky fruit creams.
The opener, a loud, poppy version of Sleigh Ride is fun, which makes sense since it’s performed by the band fun. Other highlights include the Shins’ organ-laden Wonderful Christmastime.
The disc has enough bands to keep all the cool kids on your gift list happy, from Paul McCartney with The Christmas Song to The Civil Wars with I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day. If anything, the disc skews a little sombre, but it breaks up the season’s over-the-top cheer nicely.
–Stephanie McKay/Postmedia News
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Lady Antebellum
On This Winter’s Night
Rating: 4 out of 5
As they say in their CD booklet, Hillary, Dave, and Charles each have such different memories of Christmas that they give us quite a mixed Santa’s bag of songs.
There’s a reverent rendering of Silent Night, a wildly cacophonous Holly Jolly Christmas, two rockers in Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) and All I Want for Christmas Is You, and a honky-tonkin’ Blue Christmas.
They may be country-pop darlings, but this album is pure pop for your party pleasure.
–Bill Robertson/Postmedia News
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Christmas with Scotty McCreery
Scotty McCreery
Rating: 5 out of 5
The 2011 American Idol winner, Scotty McCreery, gives his interpretation of some old Christmas chestnuts and a few you may not have heard before.
Let It Snow has a cheery rambunctiousness to it, while First Noel, O Holy Night, Mary Did You Know? and Christmas In Heaven are all delivered in appropriately reverent tones. Jingle Bells and Santa Claus is Back in Town are done R & B fashion, while Holly Jolly Christmas is a wild hootenanny.
McCreery has a distinctive country twang in his voice and he turns it up to full hickory smoke on some of these numbers. His big win was no fluke.
–Bill Robertson/Postmedia News
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Suzie McNeil
This is Christmas
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Hark the heralds, this girl can sing. But does Suzie McNeil’s sharply honed pop-rock voice carve something new in holiday music or slice the genre to shreds?
I bring tidings of great joy. The Toronto singer-songwriter and voice of Marineland succeeds in her first Christmas album. Evenly divided between originals like the punchy title tune and chestnuts like White Christmas, the album is nice to have around. It’s also short, running only half an hour. So, unlike your house guests, it won’t overstay its welcome.
–Cam Fuller/Postmedia News
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This Christmas
Olivia Newton-John & John Travolta
Rating: 1 out of 5
If you can somehow get past the hypnotizing plastic stares and sprayed-on hairline on the cover and actually listen to This Christmas by Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta, you will hear … one of the most awkward holiday albums of this year.
The country-tinged original song I Think You Might Like It is the worst of the record, with extra cringe points for the line “Then we’re going to hide away, making love all night.” I dare you to look up the music video.
The album gets one star only because proceeds go to charity. Save yourself and just donate that money.
–Stephanie McKay/Postmedia News
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Christina Perri
A Very Merry Perri Christmas
Rating: 2.5 out of 5
There was a time when good singers made lushly produced albums that were easy to listen to. That was 1970, and the genre was known as “easy listening.” Well, you might be dizzy from the time warp, but iTunes’ “Breakthrough Pop Artist of 2011″ has captured (or perpetrated) that feeling here.
There are six songs in all, making it a pretty short 8-track. The original song There’s Something About December sounds like Burt Bacharach, in a pretty good way, and Merry Christmas Darling sounds as sad as the Carpenters who originated it. Play this in your customized van. And keep on truck-in.’
–Cam Fuller/Postmedia News
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Jimmy Rankin
Tinsel Town
Rating: 4 out of 5
His sisters made a wonderful Christmas album many years ago. Can Jimmy come close? Well, the two records are so different you can’t compare. But Tinsel Town is really good. It leans more toward country than Celtic and contains some really thoughtful and original originals like Don’t Wanna Say Goodbye to Christmas and a Gordon Lightfootish song called December. Jimmy loses points for putting both Jingle Bell Rock and Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree on the same record. But his take on other classics like Silver Bells is solid. Atta boy, bro.
–Cam Fuller/Postmedia News
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Cheers, It’s Christmas
Blake Shelton
Rating: 2.5 out of 5
Every once in a while a Christmas album tries to think outside the gingerbread house. This is not one of those records. But the first few songs might be the perfect cure holiday for insomnia.
Shelton’s mildly twanged versions of Jingle Bell Rock, Let It Snow and White Christmas add nothing new to the Christmas canon.
The singer and Voice judge does make an attempt at originality with the song Oklahoma Christmas, on which Reba McEntire joins in. Santa’s Got A Choo Choo Train also lets Shelton’s country personality shine.
None of the songs are terrible and, to his credit, Shelton avoids getting super-cheesy. It’s just really boring.
–Stephanie McKay/Postmedia News
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Rod Stewart
Merry Christmas, Baby
Rating: 4 out of 5
With the sultan of smooth David Foster on piano and behind the production and arrangements, Rod Stewart makes an easy-swinging, jazzy Christmas album. There are favourites Winter Wonderland, Let It Snow, and a fairly rocking Merry Christmas, Baby, with vocal help from Cee Lo Green.
They even resurrect Ella Fitzgerald to duet on What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve? With excellent players like Chris Botti and Trombone Shorty, this album’s a lovely addition to any Christmas collection.
–Bill Robertson/Postmedia News
