ARCHIVES
Wintry Mixes
Rating the sounds of this holiday season. Run, Rudolph. Don't Look Back.
Published: Dec 9, 2009
| What deal is this? |
Sounds like ... | Highlights/ Lowlights |
Grade | |
 Kathy Griffin
Suckin' It for the Holidays
(Music with a Twist)
|
The cackling red witch of comedy does one Xmas/Kwanzaa cackle, then launches into her usual cackles on reality TV/celebs/the gays. | Don Rickles' parrot. | "Maya Angelou is Insufferable" made me laugh. / Way too much material on Real Housewives and other Gawker crapola. Plus: Why pretend this is a Christmas album? | C |
Tori Amos
Midwinter Graces
(Universal)
|
The sometimes abrasive piano-stool-straddler makes a classic-sounding, big-bandish and mostly Christless Christmas album. | A more at-peace/less pale version of what made Amos famous: rumbling piano, soothing vocals, moody songs about pretty moments. No angst, though. | "Pink and Glitter" is actually catchy. / Weird pronunciation choices, i.e. "Slyeep in hyeevenlee pissss." Hey Tori, you're from North Carolina. | B |
Halford 3
Winter Songs
(Metal God)
|
The Judas Priest frontman does half-metal carols and strangely blissful, nearly religious snow-plower ballads. | He means it. As in: This isn't some kinda over-the-top ironic post-modern joke. | "Get Into the Spirit" is huge like Mastodon. / No storm of shredding licks and double-kick drums can save a withered classic like "We Three Kings." | B+ |
Various Artists
Menorah Mashups
(djbc.net)
|
Known for his annual Xmas bastardizations, merry Boston mash-upper djBC moves on to Hanukkah with mixes of Weird Al, House of Pain, Zappa and more. Totally not legal, copyright-wise. (Free for download at djbc.net.) | A dreidel spinning across the turntables. Lots of accordions and vocal samples matched with legit house-dub beats. | "Hanukkah in Dub" is pretty sweet. / From "Nagilah What" to "Challahback Girl 2009," most tracks seem to sample "Hava Nagila" and it gets a little old. | B |
Bob Dylan
Christmas in the Heart
(Sony)
|
An indefensible collection of awkward, sincere, silly Christmas covers. Johnny Cash could pull off this kind of thing, but Bob just sounds crazypants. Whatever. It's for charity (Feeding America). | An unshaven Bob Dylan sledding a Velcro toboggan down a sandpaper bunny slope, dragging a piano, an accordion and Joe Cocker behind him. It's for charity, so. | It's for charity. / There's a hard-to-define indignity to one of the greatest living songwriters gargling out a line like "Who's got a big red cherry nose? Who laughs this way: ho ho ho?" | F |
RondoBrothers
This Is Your Brain on Xmas
(troublewith2)
|
San Francisco producer-duo Rondo Brothers tap some friends (Kelly Atkins, MC Lars, Motion Man) for an upbeat holiday comp trimmed with pop, rap and lots of overlays. | Urban Outfitters incidental soundtrack No. 0041201. A midtempo hip-hop beat can make almost anything tolerable. | "Xmas at My House" (kind of a "Christmas in Hollis" lite) is funny. / A few tracks, like "Jingle Bells on Crack," try way too hard. It's the holidays. Relax. | C |
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