![]() Nothing beats “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” from her 1994 album “Merry Christmas,” one of the great modern holiday albums. Carey’s vocals are slippery, and she’s naughty in a nice way: “I saw him shopping last week/And his new girl was so weak.” Santa as home wrecker? Why not? The rest of this album intersperses originals (a surprisingly modest neo-soul “When Christmas Comes” ) with classics - a respectful “First Noel,” an aptly baby-making take on “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” and “Here Comes Santa Claus (Right Down Santa Claus Lane)” as routed through a strip club. From Mariah Carey’s new holiday album, “Merry Christmas II You,” it’s peppy and buoyant, moving along at reindeer-quick speed, a hybrid of girl-group harmony and lightweight Atlanta bass music. “Oh Santa!” doesn’t sound like anyone’s idea of a Christmas standard, but maybe it should. MARIAH CAREY: ‘MERRY CHRISTMAS II YOU’ (Island Def Jam, $13.98). “I’ll be groovin’ at Christmastime,” Brown promised in the stream-of-consciousness “Soulful Christmas.” And he was: singing seasonal chestnuts with raspy syncopations, adding Christmas tidings to other messages in songs like “Hey America,” and playing R&B instrumentals (occasionally quoting seasonal songs) with titles like “Believers Shall Enjoy (Non-Believers Shall Suffer).” His “Sweet Little Baby Boy (Parts 1 and 2)” and “A Lonely Little Boy Around One Little Christmas Toy,” with strings and shrieks, are wholehearted preaching and unmistakably James Brown. ![]() If anyone could shout at Christmastime, it was James Brown, who released Christmas albums in 1966, 19 that are reissued here, along with a handful of other tracks, on two CDs. JAMES BROWN: ‘THE COMPLETE JAMES BROWN CHRISTMAS’ (Hip-O Select/Universal, $39.98). “Perfect Day” is the highlight, but Boyle is also impressive on Crowded House’s “Don’t Dream It’s Over,” turning it into a proper devotional. Mostly, she and the producer Steve Mac render traditionals - “Auld Lang Syne,” “O Come All Ye Faithful” and more - in unerringly gorgeous, if wrenchingly polite, arrangements, performances that smooth flat the many creases in Boyle’s sometimes erratic public persona. The hurdle has been cleared, and “Perfect Day” - spooky, ambitious, elegant - opens and sets the tone for “The Gift,” Boyle’s holiday collection. SUSAN BOYLE: ‘THE GIFT’ (Syco/Columbia, $11.98).įor the holidays, try forgiveness, inspired by the rapprochement between Susan Boyle, the multiplatinum-selling operatically inclined British reality-show contestant, and Lou Reed, the bah-humbug Grinch who reportedly denied Boyle the rights to perform “Perfect Day” on American television a couple of months ago. Again, the arrangement is spare, but here, faintly, in the back, bells jingle. “The judge says if I call them, then I’ll go straight to jail/But I can send them presents through the mail.” The song ends abruptly with a ringing phone and an innocent voice: “Merry Christmas, Daddy.” The B side is “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day,” a carol based on Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem “Christmas Bells,” about a skeptic shaken free of his doubt. “I long to hand out presents/And watch their faces glow,” he says of the children who live with their mother, hundreds of miles away. It’s a skeleton, and a broken, incomplete one at that - less song than confessional. “Wish My Kids Were Here” is the A side of this seven-inch single, the seventh in an annual holiday series for David Bazan, who has spoken openly of his struggles with Christianity. 14 at the Metropolitan Museum’s Medieval Sculpture Hall information: .)ĭAVID BAZAN: ‘WISH MY KIDS WERE HERE’ (Suicide Squeeze, $5.99).Ĭhristmas is a day to celebrate closeness and also a day to wrestle with consequences. ![]() (The group will perform a Christmas-related concert at 6:30 and 8:30 p.m. The record presents triadic harmonies and the group’s immaculate handling of art-song polyphony, and then the song itself, sung by only one of the singers - Marsha Genensky - in Kentucky Appalachian style. Anonymous 4 has gone about it in wide focus: It includes medieval English and Irish precedents to the carol, and related American songs rooted in British caroling. Intelligently and responsibly, the American a cappella group Anonymous 4 has built an album around one 15th-century English song, “The Cherry Tree Carol,” on the subject of Joseph, Mary and the miracle pregnancy. Here, the pop and jazz critics of The New York Times look for meaning, and hidden presents, in this year’s crop of holiday releases.ĪNONYMOUS 4: ‘THE CHERRY TREE: SONGS, CAROLS & BALLADS FOR CHRISTMAS’ (Harmonia Mundi, $19.98). Or even more rarely, something not thrilling, but bracing not all holiday experiences are cheerful. And also like gifts, the ones worth receiving and embracing are those that in spite of the familiar structure, find new ways to deliver old thrills. Like gifts themselves, Christmas albums shouldn’t be obligations, though they all too often are.
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