Sufjan Stevens
Silver & Gold
Asthmatic Kitty
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
On his second collection of Christmas EPs — he has released one a year to friends and family since 2001, missing only 2004 — Sufjan Stevens throws everything at the wall to see what sticks. Surprisingly, a good two-thirds of it does. Radically rewritten standards, hymns and pop evergreens, wacky originals, shambolic carollers, Auto-Tune excess, video-arcade synth drums, a few tracks that meander senselessly, tiny links featuring recorders, acoustic pop gems, the barely listenable, the profoundly strange and the truly beautiful all collide joyously in these wonderfully weird discs. The five-CD box also includes tattoos, stickers, an elaborate cut-out Christmas tree star no one will assemble, and an 82-page booklet that features lyrics, chords and a brilliant essay on why this deeply spiritual, oddball genius loves Christmas. All in all, this is one glorious mess.
Podworthy: Angels We Have Heard on High
–Bernard Perusse (BP), Postmedia News
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Various Artists
Trésors de Noël 1944-2011
Distribution Select
Rating: 3 out of 5
This trip through the Radio-Canada archives exhumes live Christmas performances over the years, done in a smorgasbord of styles, including jazz, pop, Québécois trad, classical and even Gregorian chant from Benedictine nuns. Fernand Gignac, Claude Léveillée, Jean-Pierre Ferland, La Bottine Souriante, the Lost Fingers, Nikki Yanofsky, Emilie-Claire Barlow and the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal are among those who were recorded on various Rad-Can shows, performing seasonal favourites. Predictably, it’s hit and miss, with some stirring beauties (Ô traineau dans le ciel, Noël pour l’amour de Marie) sharing space with songs that are maudlin (Les enfants oubliés) or overexposed (not another Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas!). And it could have been more chronologically balanced: of the 36 tracks, only 16 were recorded between 1944 and 2000. Still, there are enough haunting historical snapshots here to make it worth having.
Podworthy: Noel pour l’amour de Marie (Claire Pelletier and Karen Young)
–BP
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Ken Whiteley
The Light of Christmas
Pyramid
Rating: 4 out of 5
A year after being in an ICU on life support, Ken Whiteley was back in the studio recording this life-affirming, unabashedly Christian-based set of seasonal songs. Assisted by brother Chris, son Ben and other Whiteley family members, he turns in a loose, spirited set of roots-based rockers, heavy on driving acoustic guitar, playful horns, Band-like organ, sweet harmony and call-and-response gospel celebration. Mixing originals like the sweet, nostalgic I Can’t Imagine Christmas Without You with traditional classics like Go Tell It on the Mountain and a couple of inspired covers (Santa Claus Blues and Amen), Whiteley has delivered one of those rarities in the yearly Christmas onslaught: an album you’ll play right through — every year.
Podworthy: Ain’t That a Rockin’ All Night
–BP
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Various Artists
A Very Joma Christmas
Joma Music Group
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
How many different ways can a writer say “mixed bag?” The last various-artists rock ‘n’ roll Christmas compilation that was consistently satisfying might have been the Phil Spector-produced A Christmas Gift for You, released the day JFK was assassinated in 1963. This collection of originals and remakes by obscure New York indie bands is no exception to the rule, but it’s mostly great fun. Ubiquitous Beach Boys harmonies, sleigh bells, girl-group pastiches, not-quite-Beatlesque hooks, energetic acoustic guitar strumming, lo-fi production, alternate-universe pop singles and that awkward combination of innocent and ironic are spread over 19 tracks (the original 2009 album, plus bonus selections). If it feels a bit like eating an entire box of chocolates in one sitting, that’s a small price to pay.
Podworthy: Santa Forever (Mia Crosby)
–BP
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Rod Stewart
Merry Christmas, Baby
Verve
Rating: 2 out of 5
Predictably, this is not the rockin’ Rod the Mod slipping down our chimney. This is the dinner-party, supper club-jazz Rod of the Great American Songbook career makeover. The omnipresence of easy-listening producer David Foster tells you that right off the bat. A duet with Michael Bublé (Winter Wonderland) and a playful exchange with Cee Lo Green on the title song are not without their charms, but collaborations with Ella Fitzgerald (has a virtual pairing with a dead singer ever been a good idea?) and an over-singing Mary J. Blige are more typical of the disc’s lack of inspiration. The rest is Rod singing alone, supported by gooey strings and by-the-numbers arrangements of charred chestnuts. Which naturally raises the question: Why did songwriters stop producing potential Christmas standards decades ago?
Podworthy: Merry Christmas, Baby
–BP
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Various Artists
Holidays Rule
Hear Music
Rating: 2.5 out of 5
This Starbucks compilation revisits yuletides of yesteryear with pretty much the same modus operandi as hundreds of others: take the usual batch of seasonal hits and classics so many have done better, hand the words to a solid list of cult heroes and pop stars, and clothe the songs in pop-rock or light jazz arrangements. There are exceptions to the yawn factor: Irma Thomas and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band swing with authority on May Ev’ry Day Be Christmas, Calexico’s Green Grows the Holly is a haunting stunner, Eleanor Friedberger’s driving, jazzy take on Santa, Bring My Baby Back to Me is inspired and Andrew Bird’s breezy version of Auld Lang Syne is undeniably sweet. But fun., the Shins, Rufus Wainwright and Sharon Van Etten, the Civil Wars and Holly Golightly are among the contributors who fail to ignite.
Podworthy: Green Grows the Holly (Calexico)
–BP
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Colbie Caillat
Christmas in the Sand
Universal Republic
Rating: 2 out of 5
Californian beach bunny Caillat is certainly going for a theme here, frolicking in the surf with sketchy-looking elves and hanging out with a carrot-nosed Frumpy the Sandman in the album artwork, and tweaking the lyrics of Silver Bells to “it’s Christmas time in Hawaii.” But the listless arrangements tend to confuse sunny with sunstroked, and Caillat’s attractive but one-dimensional vocals rarely make December without snow sound like a joyous occasion. She’s most engaged on the crisp original Every Day Is Christmas, and her understated Auld Lang Syne holds the warmth that should have defined the entire album. Still, the most memorable track is a chaotic Baby It’s Cold Outside, in which Caillat and Gavin DeGraw nail the conversational rhythm of two flirts who have been licking the bottom of the punch bowl.
Podworthy: Every Day Is Christmas
–Jordan Zivitz (JZ), Postmedia News
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John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John
This Christmas
Universal
Rating: 2 out of 5
Well, they’ve got the right spirit: the artist proceeds from This Christmas go to Travolta and Newton-John’s charities. You could just cut some cheques, but then you’d miss out on Travolta’s inexplicably random phrasing in Baby It’s Cold Outside. (Someone needs to compile all the misguided versions of that duet into a box set.) Overall, it’s his line readings — and the merriment-at-gunpoint photos — that make This Christmas a borderline camp experience. Travolta’s hiccupping contribution to Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree is met with the Kenny G solo it deserves, and can’t compare to Newton-John’s measured vocal in Silent Night, whose lilting Celtic prelude partially absolves an eventual descent into pa-rum-pum-pum hell. Speaking of hell, the lone original, I Think You Might Like It, is a mind-boggling attempt to cram the summer spirit of Grease into a stocking.
Podworthy: Silent Night
–JZ
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Blake Shelton
Cheers, It’s Christmas.
Warner Bros.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Judging by the country crooner’s noggy eyes in the cover photo, Shelton has been quoting his album title a little too liberally at holiday parties. That fireside image is the cheesiest element of a disc that is surprisingly refined, considering the presence of an original called Santa’s Got a Choo Choo Train. (The down-home number isn’t as hokey as one would fear.) Shelton and his duet partners — including Michael Bublé, on a reworked version of his hit Home — rein themselves in, and the twangy touches don’t overwhelm the reverent orchestrations. If Winter Wonderland and I’ll Be Home for Christmas are perfunctory, the same can’t be said for the less-expected C&W praise of There’s a New Kid in Town.
Podworthy: There’s a New Kid in Town
–JZ
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André Rieu
Home for the Holidays
Universal
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
For someone whose exposure to the Waltz King has been limited to channel-surfing past lavish performances on PBS, the ear-opening aspect of Home for the Holidays is its restraint. With a few exceptions — notably a clip-clopping Go Tell It on the Mountain whose climax almost collides with a Mardi Gras parade — Rieu and his multitude of helpers are in thrall to the serenity of the season. And, in the vocals for O Holy Night and Old Toy Trains, the sugar shock of the season. I’ll leave it to colleague Arthur Kaptainis to assess the technique of Rieu’s ensemble, and will instead offer a recommendation to those looking for a traditional album that functions as an unobtrusive backdrop to cider-mulling.
Podworthy: O Come All Ye Faithful
–JZ
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Dawn McCarthy and Bonnie “Prince” Billy
Christmas Eve Can Kill You (single)
Drag City
Rating: 4 out of 5
A preview of the duo’s forthcoming Everly Brothers covers album, and a reminder of the haunting power in their spectral/earthy harmonies, which made 2006’s The Letting Go such a standout in Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s catalogue. More rustic than the Everlys’s version, but just as mournful, capturing the despair in “the sound of one man walking through the snow.” Backed with a fun but less essential (and far less seasonal) romp through Walking the Dog.
–JZ
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Cee Lo Green
Cee Lo’s Magic Moment
Elektra/WEA
Rating: 4 out of 5
Forget listening to it — this will make you dumber just by looking at it. Depicted on the CD cover is the ubiquitous Cee Lo Green, riding shotgun beside a spiffy reindeer chauffeur in an airborne 453-horsepower Rolls-Royce Phantom Drophead Coup. (The last three of those horses are pictured harnessed to the Rolls, pulling it Dasher, Dancer and Prancer-style, giving the other 450 a timeout.) But if you’ve got the brain cells to spare, there’s no shortage of fun to be had here. This is the Velveeta of holiday albums, a smooth, melt-in-your-mind R&B Xmas party that has about as much in common with traditional cheer as Velveeta does with traditional cheese. Among others, it features appearances by Christina Aguilera (a breezy Baby It’s Cold Outside), Straight No Chaser (on a creative, cartoonish version of You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch, of which Dr. Seuss would doubtless approve) and, easily the highlight, the Muppets on All I Need Is Love, a kind of inspired hybrid of Lou Bega’s Mambo No. 5 and the Muppets’ Mahna Mahna. Even better is the video, featuring a Cee Lo muppet and the aforementioned half-a-million-dollar Rolls in the opening and closing shots. Money money, do doo be-do-do …
Podworthy: All I Need Is Love
–Jamie O’Meara (JO), Postmedia News
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H2 — Harkness-Herriott Duo
Home for the Holidays
Opening Day Entertainment Group
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Warm, richly textured, earthy and satisfying, Home for the Holidays is the reindeer steak of seasonal CDs. A cross-border collaboration, it features Canadian A-list jazz multi-instrumentalist Mike Herriott on flugelhorn and New York-based virtuoso guitarist Sean Harkness on six- and 12-strings. Evocative, exceptionally arranged jazzy/bluesy interpretations of traditionals like God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman, Good King Wenceslas and O Tannenbaum make up the bulk of the gifts under this carefully cultivated Christmas tree, though the boys demonstrate their reach, subtly and utterly without pretense, on the classically inclined reconstruction of 16th-century German composer Michael Praetorius’s Lo How a Rose. Serenity, celebration and meditation, all on one generously portioned musical plate. Rudolph never tasted so good.
Podworthy: God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman
–JO
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Various Artists
Glee: The Music — The Christmas Album, Volume 3
Columbia/Sony
Rating: 2 out of 5
Coal is often referred to as “buried sunshine,” since it is derived from the decayed remains of plants that, in life, had obtained their energy from the sun through the process of photosynthesis. So, should someone in your Christmas circle deposit this in your stocking, look upon it not so much as a square-ish lump of digitized coal, but rather as a Glee-ming beam of buried Santa sunshine.
Podworthy: Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
–JO
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Various Artists
Star Académie — Noël
Productions J/Select
Rating: 2 out of 5
Ah, a classic Christmas clash of good and evil. In one corner, gluttonously indulgent holiday interpretations that put the retch in wretched; in the other, honest attempts to capture the season in song. Included here is a perfunctory rendition of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, which won’t sit with the greats, but neither will it disservice them. That distinction belongs to the bloated and overwrought soul song C’est Noël and to the riffy and completely iffy Spanish-guitar-style Sainte nuit. Also noteworthy for all the wrong reasons are an insipid soft-rock interpretation of Marie-Noël (which will find practical application only when waterboarding falls out of favour) and a speedy Triste à Noël, the French-language version of Blue Christmas (and what you might reasonably expect if you crossed a jazz big band with a meth lab). Fighting for the forces of good are the album-closing trio Joyeux Noël/Douces Nuits de Noël, Minuit! Chrétiens and Happy Xmas (War Is Over), all tasteful renditions that capture some of the sentiments of the season. But alas, too little too late. Evil wins again.
Podworthy: Joyeux Noël/Douces Nuits de Noël (Olivier Dion)
–JO
