Have you seen this week’s Billboard album chart? We’ll save you the trouble of looking for it and tell you that there are a lot of holiday albums on it, the highest-charting of which is hometown hero Michael Bublé’s eight-year-old Christmas LP. The Top 20 alone is filled with seasonal releases from Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, and other performers who died decades before anyone reading this was born. If you’re getting the impression that the listening public isn’t exactly hungry for brand-new Christmas albums, you’re right, which doesn’t bode all that well for most of the 2019 releases reviewed below.

As usual, the best ones get a wrapped gift, the so-so stuff gets tighty whiteys, and the crapola gets a Charlie Brown tree. (Maybe all it needs is a little love, but it isn’t getting it from us.) 

Bing Crosby and the London Symphony Orchestra

Bing at Christmas (Decca)

Forty years after his death, Bing Crosby remains a one-man Christmas-music industry. His catalogue of seasonal selections isn’t a bottomless pit, however. You can only repackage and reissue the same songs so many times, so some bright spark decided that what the public has really been clamouring for is a version of “White Christmas” sweetened up with layered backing vocals by Pentatonix, or a mix of the David Bowie duet “Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy” in which both singers’ voices are all but drowned out by newly recorded symphonic strings. The whole point of blowing the dust off those antique Crosby LPs every year is that they sound exactly the same as they did when you were a kid (and when your grandparents were kids, for that matter). The lesson here is that when something is timeless, it doesn’t need updating.

John Lucas

Oak Ridge Boys

Down Home Christmas (Lightning Rod)

Not to cast aspersions on the grooming habits of our fellow human beings, but at least one member of the Oak Ridge Boys looks like he could really use a MayBeau Beard Grooming and Trimming Kit, not to mention a Husqvarna hedge trimmer for the initial cleanup. The veteran Tennessee shitkickers’ gift to the MAGA crowd this year is a mainstream-country holiday collection that sounds weirdly like a Saturday Night Live parody skit, with an appearance by an overemoting Adam Sandler the only thing missing from the ham-fisted “The Family Piano”. Offering up tracks like “Angels” and “Reindeer on the Roof”, the group seems to realize that no one wants to hear “Jingle Bells” covered for the 9,000th time. One has to wonder, however, why anyone would include a song like “Don’t Go Pullin’ on Santa Claus’ Beard” when they should really be warning kids to steer clear of William Lee Golden.

Mike Usinger

Chicago Christmas

Chicago Christmas (Rhino)

Somewhere out there in the world, someone’s uncle would really appreciate this. (Said uncle stubbornly refuses to lop off his ponytail and won’t shut up about the time he almost caught one of Mark Knopfler’s guitar picks back in ’85.) It sounds like a Chicago record, which of course means superb musicianship—these guys have spent decades touring, after all—replete with multipart vocal harmonies and the band’s signature horn arrangements. Yet somehow the whole enterprise feels slick and soulless. With the possible exception of the aforementioned uncle, no one is going to be filling their seasonal playlists with instantly forgettable Chicago originals like “(Because) It’s Christmastime” and “I’m Your Santa Claus”. Oddly, the latter tune lifts the hook from Donny Hathaway’s “This Christmas”, which is a song Chicago recorded for one of its previous Christmas albums, so maybe originals isn’t really the right word.

John Lucas

Lea Michele

Christmas in the City (Sony)

For most of us, Christmas in the city means three hours of snow followed by the kind of slush-soup shitshow that makes you wish you’d put on Night Cat Fishing Waders before leaving the house. For Glee alumna Lea Michele, however, Xmas in the Big Smoke seems to be about crimson-red party dresses, ice skating by the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center, and 11 a.m. mimosas at Ai Fiori. All of which is to say that if you love the overglossy work of Barbra Streisand on A Christmas Album, this needlessly slick and entirely soulless outing is the next best thing to rose-coloured glasses. As a major Babs fan, Michele subscribes to the theory that there’s no need to consort with the scumbags and maggots of “Fairytale of New York” when you’ve got the lily-white virgins of “Silent Night”.

Mike Usinger

Ana Gasteyer

Sugar & Booze (Henry’s Girl, Inc.)

Ana Gasteyer gets it. Christmas is all about sustaining that sugar-and-alcohol buzz every waking minute until the holidays are over. That’s the none-too-subtle message of this album’s title track, and we say “Right on, sister!” Backed by a tight jazz combo, the former Saturday Night Live cast member goes for a strictly vintage sound here, throwing back to the hepcat 1950s and early ’60s. If, like us, you’re convinced that there’s no cooler Christmas song than June Christy’s recording of “The Merriest”, Gasteyer is probably on your wavelength. Actually, she takes a crack at that one herself, and while it can’t quite match the effortless urbanity of the original, let’s give Gasteyer points for trying.

John Lucas

Robbie Williams

The Christmas Present (Columbia)

Because Robbie Williams seems like the kind of guy who’d fart at Christmas Mass and then refuse to ’fess up, it’s understandable you want to hate The Christmas Present. When he wasn’t tormenting poor old Jimmy Page with house renovations, the former Take That boy-bander took the time to get things right when he booked the studio earlier this year for The Christmas Present. “Winter Wonderland” has a decidedly widescreen-retro vibe, “Merry Xmas Everybody” smells like Beach Boys–brand California surf, and “Let’s Not Go Shopping” does faux Sinatra with a panache that Seth MacFarlane would appreciate. If not for the inexcusably execrable “Millennium” from a few years back (not to mention his probable church farting), all would be forgiven.

Mike Usinger

Dionne Warwick

Dionne Warwick & the Voices of Christmas (Kind Music)

Dionne Warwick turns 79 this week, so it would be unfair to expect the veteran performer to sound the same as the 24-year-old who sang “Walk on By” in 1964. Her voice is a little deeper and rougher around the edges, but Warwick can certainly still sell a lyric, even one as inconsequential as “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”. Some of the artistic choices here are downright weird—including a love-me-down slow-jam version of “White Christmas” featuring octogenarian Johnny Mathis and a sleigh-ride-to-the-honky-tonk take on “Jingle Bells” with John Rich, the Oak Ridge Boys, and Ricky Skaggs—but the repertoire is so unimaginative that it seems as if someone selected it by Googling “Top 12 most popular Christmas songs”.

John Lucas

Kacey Musgraves

The Kacey Musgraves Christmas Show (MCA Nashville)

If you haven’t already watched the Amazon Prime show to which it serves as the soundtrack, this album won’t make much sense. Some of the songs—including duets with James Corden and Fred Armisen—feature comedy bits that rely heavily on visual gags. Mind you, they weren’t that funny to begin with, nor were the interludes with Dan Levy. The biggest problem is Musgraves herself, who is fantastic when singing her own songs (like the suitably weepy “Christmas Makes Me Cry”) but whose attempts to tackle the classics (like “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”) are about as spirited and lively as your Uncle Randy after downing his ninth glass of glühwein.

John Lucas

Various Artists

Hanukkah+ (Verve Forecast)

Given that most of the songs we consider bona fide Christmas classics were written by Jewish tunesmiths like Irving Berlin, Johnny Marks, and Mel Tormé, it somehow seems right that we who wouldn’t know a matzo ball from a hockey puck should add a few Hanukkah-themed tracks to our holiday playlists. Yo La Tengo’s loungetastic “Eight Candles” and HAIM’s dreamy take on Leonard Cohen’s “If It Be Your Will” are among the highlights of Hanukkah+, which, interestingly, includes a number of tracks by non-Jews, including Loudon Wainwright III and the Flaming Lips. Hey, if Idina Menzel and Neil Diamond can release Christmas albums, why not?

John Lucas

Leah

Ancient Winter (Independent)

Vancouver’s Leah describes herself as a symphonic metal artist, which makes her sound a little like a Great White North solo version of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. Ancient Winter is way classier than that, taking you to a world of pristine, snow-covered forest clearings and black cliffs that tower over remote, windswept oceans. Sounding like the best parts of Enya, Led Zeppelin, and Dead Can Dance, the album-opening “The Whole World Summons” gets maximum dramatic effect out of groaning cello and crystalline keyboards. Elsewhere, Leah’s ethereally multitracked vocals make “The Messenger” the perfect soundtrack for star-gazing on cold December nights. It’s all crazily beautiful in the most transportive of ways, which is to say that if you need a break from “Frosty the Snowman” or “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”, let Leah be your guide.

Mike Usinger

Los Lobos

Llegó Navidad (Rhino)

Sometimes the vibe is everything, which makes things potentially tricky when it comes to Los Lobos’ relentlessly tasteful Llegó Navidad. Those of the opinion that Christmas is supposed to be about snowy mountains and skating on frozen ponds will be instantly put off by the fact “It’s Christmas Time in Texas” sounds like a rollicking night at an Austin barbecue joint. Those happy to escape winter for climates where folks go Xmas-tree shopping in shorts and flip-flops, meanwhile, will completely love the faux-calypso flavour of “¿Dónde Está Santa Claus?”. Oh, and there’s a cover of “Feliz Navidad”—but you already knew that—in which Los Lobos are smart enough to turn an overplayed standard into something that sounds, joyously and authentically, like an extended family sing-along in East Los Angeles.

Mike Usinger

Robson Singers

Christmas (Independent)

Sure, there’s a new Pentatonix Christmas album this year—when isn’t there?—but for some seasonal a cappella music without the studio slickness, think local. Listening to Vancouver’s own Robson Singers (Dayna Coulter, Katie Henthorne, Maria Krause, and Tricia Coleman) is the next best thing to having carollers show up at your door. Which, let’s be honest, is about as likely to happen in 2019 as a jolly fat man hopping into your fireplace to deliver a brand-new Nintendo Switch and the keys to a Tesla CyberTruck. With repertoire ranging from medieval carols (“Gabriel’s Message”) to 21st-century indie rock (Fleet Foxes’ “White Winter Hymnal”), Robson Singers offer something for everyone—including the Greater Vancouver Food Bank, which will receive all proceeds from the sale of this album, which you can find on Bandcamp.com.

John Lucas

Pentatonix

The Best of Pentatonix Christmas (RCA)

Jesus H. bearded Christ on a candy-fucking-cane crutch—who the hell listens to this shit? There’s a reason the Arlington, Texas, a cappella group has inspired web forums like “who the hell is buying all these pentatonix albums” and “20 Worst Christmas Songs Ever Written” and “Watch Pentatonix Ruin a Song You Used to Like”. For the last one, start with The Best of Pentatonix Christmas’s mangling of “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy”, and then accept the fact that no amount of liquor can ever steel you for the crap-splattered rendition of “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch”.

Mike Usinger