CD reviews
Everyday is Christmas WHEN December hits, whether I like it or not, my home stereo switches from regular music to Christmas music. Yay?! Look, if someone in your family loves Christmas, the best thing to do is find them this year’s new Christmas albums. Buy them. Buy them all for your own sanity! The songs may be (mostly) the same, but at least they’ll sound slightly different. This brings me to Aussie pop queen Sia and the festive season album that she knocked out in a fortnight. From her downtempo torch song
Snowman to her indie-leaning upbeat pop on Santa’s Coming
For Us, Sia delivers an album full of songs that would be comfortable on a regular Sia album if not for the Christmas lyrics. To her credit she didn’t just trot out Silent
Night and all the other classics, she wrote new songs with a yuletide vibe. That is not the norm for these types of album. And it’s mostly good fun, except for the PETA-sponsored song Puppies Are Forever. And one question about Ho Ho Ho: Is this one about holiday season drinking? GWEN STEFANI You Make it Feel Like Christmas UNLIKE Sia, the voice of ’90s band No Doubt comes straight out of the gates with Jingle Bells. Classic. Hard to resist, I’m sure. Not exactly inspired, though. Her version is fun and flirty, with Gwen’s distinct tone backed by a ton of horns. She gets the strings out for Let
It Snow and then (gasp!) Silent
Night gets a run in the first few tunes, too. Like Sia, Gwen wrote some new tunes too. The thing is, a song like My Gift Is You is just a pop song about love. Gwen, it’s not a Christmas tune. It’s just not very Christmassy! The title track is similarly problematic. It’s a duet with her boyfriend Blake Shelton. It cribs from the Supremes’ You Can’t Hurry
Love. And it’s just not Christmassy! However, overall the Gwen album is less tiresome than most Christmas outings.
KASKADE Kaskade Christmas ONCE upon a time Kaskade was a cool deep house DJ and music writer. He had a sideline gig writing downtempo jazz music with Late Night Alumni. Then he got ambitious and turned into a gross EDM-trance mainstage Vegas DJ. Now Kaskade turns his skills to the festive season and it’s not as horrible as one might expect. This music is more in line with the songwriting of his early career. This isn’t an album of bass drops and snare rolls. It is, however, not like any Christmas album, ever. It is very modern. Deck the
Halls, for example, sounds a bit like it was remixed by Flume. I’m not mad at it.