It’s beginning to sound a lot like Christmas thanks to Cher and folk queen Kate Rusby: ADRIAN THRILLS review’s this year’s festive albums
The weather outside may be frightful, but pop’s finest are ready to warm our hearts with Christmas standards, folk carols and kitsch classics. This week I’m sorting the crackers from the turkeys…
GREGORY PORTER
Christmas Wish (Blue Note)
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Porter’s baritone shines on Wonder’s Someday At Christmas and Gaye’s Purple Snowflakes, but the cat in the hat is at his elegant best on Cole’s Cradle In Bethlehem
The jazzman pays tribute to Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye and Nat King Cole on his first Christmas album. Porter’s baritone shines on Wonder’s Someday At Christmas and Gaye’s Purple Snowflakes, but the cat in the hat is at his elegant best on Cole’s Cradle In Bethlehem and What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve? — a duet with Samara Joy. Amid the soul and swing standards, he sings a handful of originals: the title track is a touching eulogy to his late mother, but there’s a little too much festive cheese on the sentimental Heart For Christmas.
CHER
Christmas (Warner)
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There’s camp, there’s kitsch and there’s a new Christmas album by Cher
There’s camp, there’s kitsch… and there’s a new Christmas album by Cher. I reviewed the goddess of pop’s seasonal offering two months ago, but it would be Scrooge-like not to mention it again, as it’s the year’s most enjoyable party album. The tone is set by two dance tracks: the auto-tuned DJ Play A Christmas Song and Angels In The Snow. There’s also a detour into glam rock, plus schmaltzy duets with Michael Bublé and Cyndi Lauper.
SABRINA CARPENTER
Fruitcake (Island)
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The former Disney starlet rejoins Taylor Swift on the Eras tour in February and she brings a little of her fellow Pennsylvanian’s wit and polish to this mini-LP
The former Disney starlet rejoins Taylor Swift on the Eras tour in February and she brings a little of her fellow Pennsylvanian’s wit and polish to this mini-LP. Five of its six songs are originals, and mix heartache balladry with playful pop. Cindy Lou Who imagines a love rival as a character from Dr. Seuss’s How The Grinch Stole Christmas.
The risque A Nonsense Christmas (‘I’ll be your Vixen’) puts a festive spin on Carpenter’s 2022 TikTok hit Nonsense.
Any winter gloom is dispelled on the dance-floor.
‘Fruitcake just makes me sick,’ she sings, before shimmying her blues away on disco banger Is It New Year’s Yet?
GAVIN DEGRAW
A Classic Christmas (Sony Nashville)
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One for cosy nights by a roaring fire, DeGraw’s effort is the closest in tone to Buble’s 2011 Christmas album
One for cosy nights by a roaring fire, DeGraw’s effort is the closest in tone to Buble’s 2011 Christmas album. The New Yorker is comfortable singing pop, soul and country, and he shows his class on this mini-album.
For all the gift-wrapped conviviality, he sticks to the tried and trusted in his song choices.
It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year stays solidly in the middle of the road, and Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree is a lively country-pop number.
A little more sense of adventure wouldn’t have gone amiss.
KATE RUSBY
Light Years (Pure)
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British folk royalty since the 1990s, the Barnsley Nightingale is a Yuletide veteran
British folk royalty since the 1990s, the Barnsley Nightingale is a Yuletide veteran. Her seventh seasonal selection decks the halls with reflective originals and traditional carols, making the most of her spellbinding voice.
The self-penned Glorious imagines a lost angel alighting in her back garden, while U.S. bluegrass legend Alison Krauss adds fiddle and finesse to folk carol The Moon Shines Bright. The arrangements are wonderfully varied, with Rusby’s guitar augmented by electronics and a brass band. Her bold choices include Chris de Burgh’s A Spaceman Came Travelling.
TWINNIE
Blue Christmas (BMG)
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Yorkshire actress-turned-singer Twinnie-Lee Moore mixes cheerful country with pleasant pop on a five-track release that contains four originals and a cover of Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas
The week’s third mini-album is by Yorkshire actress-turned-singer Twinnie-Lee Moore. Now honing her songwriting skills in Nashville, where she made her Grand Ole Opry debut last month, she mixes cheerful country with pleasant pop on a five-track release that contains four originals and a cover of Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas.
She plays the disillusioned romantic on the jazzy Elf Yourself (as in ‘go elf yourself’), and imagines a furtive fling on Secret Santa (‘Take those boots and leave them by the fireplace’). Yorkshire’s loss is Music City’s gain.
HAUSER
Christmas (Sony Masterworks)
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The Croatian virtuoso has appeared on Love Island, played with U2 and (as one half of 2Cellos) toured with Elton John, but the mood here is distinctly crossover classical
It’s perfect for opening presents, preparing dinner and decorating the tree,’ says Stjepan Hauser, covering all bases on an instrumental album that applies his dazzling cello work to 14 carols and American standards.
The Croatian virtuoso has appeared on Love Island, played with U2 and (as one half of 2Cellos) toured with Elton John, but the mood here is distinctly crossover classical. There’s a fairytale feel to Carol Of The Bells, adapted from a Ukrainian New Year song, and his White Christmas becomes an orchestral epic.
There’s a whiff of novelty, but it’s a beautifully performed suite.
Gregory Porter is at the Royal Albert Hall on December 13 (ticketmaster.co.uk). Kate Rusby starts a UK tour on December 7 at York Barbican (katerusby.com). Twinnie plays Bush Hall, London, on December 21 (dice.fm).
Gabriel’s back, and he’s remembered his sledgehammer
Peter Gabriel: i/o (Virgin)
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There’s a tangible sense of relief in Peter Gabriel’s first album of new material in 21 years. It’s not that the ex-Genesis frontman has been completely idle, having toured sporadically and released two orchestral LPs of covers and oldies.
It’s more that he seems delighted to be fully engaged again — ‘back in the world, walking down the road to joy’, as he puts it, on Road To Joy.
The sentiments of that track, a swaggering pop-funk workout with shades of his MTV hit Sledgehammer, are echoed elsewhere. There are songs on i/o (it stands for ‘input/output’) about mortality, grief, global warming and mass surveillance, but Gabriel, 73, is only rarely dejected.
Peter Gabriel’s first album of new material in 21 years. It’s not that the ex-Genesis frontman has been completely idle, having toured sporadically and released two orchestral LPs of covers and oldies
‘We float on love,’ he sings, assisted by Brian Eno’s piano, on This Is Home. He hasn’t moved on a great deal from the sophisticated sound he perfected on 1986’s So. His backing musicians are largely unchanged and his songs are pieces of melodic art-rock, with blue-eyed soul and world music trimmings.
Backed by a Sowetan choir, his voice retains its tuneful clarity on the title track and optimistic album closer Live And Let Live. The world has changed since Up, and he wryly addresses the advances in technology, singing of data storage on The Court (‘you’ve all your memories on your mobile phone’) and Artificial Intelligence on Olive Tree.
The latter, with David Rhodes’ guitar a nod to Gabriel’s prog-rock past, would have sat comfortably on a Genesis album.
He also sings of growing older, with backing vocals by his daughter Melanie, on So Much, although the record’s most moving moment, And Still, is an elegy to his late mother.
At 68 minutes, i/o sometimes meanders. But, despite the confusing release of two marginally different ‘bright’ and ‘dark’ mixes of the album, it’s a welcome — if long overdue — return.
Classical Reviews
LISE DAVIDSEN
Christmas From Norway (Decca 485 4358)
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The disc is at its best when she is singing simple Norwegian Yuletide songs — they come across, even with the backing of the Norwegian Radio Orchestra under Christian Eggen
A rite of passage for a prima donna is to make a Christmas CD and Lise Davidsen has her own unique take on it.
The disc is at its best when she is singing simple Norwegian Yuletide songs — they come across, even with the backing of the Norwegian Radio Orchestra under Christian Eggen.
My favourite is ‘Deilig er jorden’, which like ‘Silent Night’ and ‘Jul, jul, stralande jul’ has choral support from the Norwegian Soloists’ Choir and a lovely children’s choir.
‘Mitt hjerte alltid vanker’ is another good one and Sibelius’s Julvisa is nicely done, as are Reger’s evergreen Maria Wiegenlied and Hugo Wolf’s Schlagendes Jesuskind.
Other things seem not to ignite Davidsen’s interest: Bach’s ‘Jesu, joy of man’s desiring’ sounds rather matter-of-fact and a couple of carols in English are nothing special.
I also fail to see why we need to begin and end with versions of Adam’s ‘O holy night’ in Norwegian and English: both are really redundant as it was in French originally.
EDGAR MOREAU
Weinberg & Dutilleux Cello Concertos (Erato 5419748933)
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They are gorgeously played by French cellist Edgar Moreau, with the West German Radio SO conducted by Andris Poga, and the recordings are very easy to live with
Both of these works were written with the great Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich in mind and premiered by him.
They are gorgeously played by French cellist Edgar Moreau, with the West German Radio SO conducted by Andris Poga, and the recordings are very easy to live with.
Neither piece is quite a masterpiece but they are eminently worth hearing and the Polish Weinberg’s Concerto is easy to assimilate — he was a close friend of Shostakovich.
We used to call him Vainberg in Soviet Union days, when he was not well treated by the regime: in four movements, his work incorporates a habanera rhythm and a big cadenza.
Dutilleux’s Concerto is in five sections which all follow on, and it is very much inspired by Baudelaire’s poetry; it is more avant-garde than the Weinberg but not too forbidding.
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