Holiday music is big business: Just take a look at the Billboard charts every December, when the Top 10s fill up with Christmas albums that are both new and nostalgic.
A few tracks also feature manufactured duets with living vocalists: a full-frontal synth-and-strings assault on “Deck the Halls” and “Joy to the World,” combined together and sung “with” Johnny Mathis; a more tender read on “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square,” with Gloria Estefan; and “The Christmas Song ,” with John Legend.
This is the first Christmas-themed album from Kat Edmonson — a dapper young nostalgist, equally beguiled by Blossom Dearie and Norah Jones — but we doesn’t need the LP’s title to tell us that it won’t be her last.
Fallon digs out less frequently heard verses of songs like “O Holy Night” — “Chains He shall break, for the slave is our brother/And in His name all oppression shall cease” — and stays humble before the messages of the songs.
Now that album — with its coolly swinging, West Coast-jazz renditions of “O Tannenbaum” and other seasonal fare, plus Guaraldi’s classic “Linus and Lucy” — is getting a limited-edition reissue on both vinyl and cassette; both the LP and the tape are a gleaming silver color.
Norah Jones is slyly understated, as both a singer and pianist, on “I Dream of Christmas.” The album intersperses new songs of her own with tunes like “Blue Christmas,” “Christmas Time Is Here” and “Run Run Rudolph,” which she borrows from Chuck Berry and turns into a slinky rumba.
On “The Season,” he pushes a familiar repertoire — “Winter Wonderland,” “Auld Lang Syne” — down to slow tempos and up into the range where his tenor verges on falsetto.
Pistol Annies — the songwriting and vocal-harmony alliance of Miranda Lambert, Ashley Monroe and Angaleena Presley — wrote 10 new songs for “Hell of a Holiday,” dipping into retro styles like Western Swing, girl-group rock and Laurel Canyon pop-folk.
The 10th-anniversary-edition vinyl includes a bonus seven-inch single featuring new covers of Wham!’s “This Christmas” and Madonna’s “Holiday.” “Holiday” is a highlight: Deschanel and Ward add some synth, pick up the tempo and loosen up on the carefully cultivated aesthetics just a bit.
The Nashville-based songwriter Amanda Shires rewrote “Silent Night” as a despondent, minor-key dirge — “Nothing’s calm/nothing’s been right” — on her album “For Christmas,” which includes nine other songs of her own.