Christmas albums of the week including John Legend, Jessie J and a Spotify collection

John Legend - A Legendary Christmas

(Columbia)

****

The Christmas album provides festive frivolity but it can be serious business for artists — Michael Bublé has shifted more than 2.8 million copies of Christmas, back in the charts for the seventh year. However, seasonal LPs generally show the music industry at its most meretricious, as artists lower their standards for ropey cover versions.

A smug-looking Santa-hatted John Legend on the cover of A Legendary Christmas doesn’t bode well. But the it starts strongly with Stevie Wonder on harmonica, while Legend gets into the spirit with his soulful croon. The syrupy Silver Bells, recorded by Bing Crosby, Elvis Presley and Terry Wogan, is transformed into sleek R&B for the classier kind of party.

The typically over-familiar Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas earns its place with a sumptuous jazz arrangement and sparkling duet with Esperanza Spalding.

A half-dozen original compositions suggest Legend is serious about creating a new set of standards: bittersweet piano ballads Waiting For Christmas and By Christmas Eve seem likely to endure, and there’s fun to be had with the festive funk of Wrap Me Up In Your Love and Merry, Merry Christmas.

by Andre Paine

Jessie J - This Christmas Day

(Island)

***

It's surprising that Jessie J hasn’t put out a Christmas album before. As a former judge on The Voice in the UK and Australia and, bizarrely, the recent winner of Chinese TV talent show Singer 2018, she knows all about setting a pneumatic voice to work on some cover versions.

Thankfully, she restrains herself for the most part — guests Boyz II Men are the most guilty of oversinging on Winter Wonderland — and sticks to the traditional canon. Let It Snow and Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town have supper-club jazz backings, avoiding the dance-pop brashness of her original albums. The lone original song here, the title track, is forgettable, but again keeps things classy. Others have done the classics better, but this could be much worse.

Spotify Singles: Christmas Collection - Various Artists

(Spotify)

****

For those looking for an alternative approach to traditional Christmas songs, this Spotify Singles album has amassed an imaginative collection of covers that traverse a huge range of genres including indie, jazz, country, pop and rap. There are

15 new and exclusive covers too, among the best of which are a goth-pop reworking of Last Christmas from Pale Waves, and a fun go at jazz instrumental Linus and Lucy from Anderson .Paak. More traditional arrangements appear too, such as Tony Bennett and Diana Krall’s Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town. Miley Cyrus’s country-pop take on Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree is another highlight. Wolf Alice’s edgier take on Santa Baby is huge fun, as is DMX and Divine Bars’ riotous Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer rap. Special greetings from many of the stars appear in between tracks too, making this an enjoyable and unique collection of songs that will kick off your Christmas party in style.

by Elizabeth Aubrey

Nils Landgren - Christmas With My Friends V1

(ACT)

***

Brass, choirs and Christmas go together like sleigh bells, snow, nuts and stockings, so it’s no wonder the affable Swedish trombonist, singer and bandleader, whose long career spans work with everyone from Abba to Esbjörn Svensson, is popular in Scandinavia for his annual Yuletide recordings and concert series. This sixth offering has 16 tracks of classic and original fare, interpreted by Landgren and seven accomplished musicians on sax, piano, bass and the region’s traditional plucked kantele. Originals including hearty opener Christmas Is, by bassist Eva Kruse, sit cosily with favourites like Merry Christmas Baby, and I Have A Dream by Abba’s Benny and Björn.

by Jane Cornwell

The Monkees - Christmas Party

Rhino

***

Heyhey they’re the Monkees and somehow, they never recorded a Christmas album. So Micky Dolenz, Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork have enlisted songwriters such as Rivers Cuomo (Weezer) and Andy Partridge (XTC) to write kitsch pastiches of the sort of songs they might have made in their Sixties heyday. The result is as cheerful, disposable and unsettling as a plastic Santa Claus melting by the fire. Take the cantering surf rock of Unwrap You At Christmas, while in What Would Santa Do, Dolenz entertains a fantasy of punching festive humbugs in the face. A cover of Big Star’s joyously sarcastic Jesus Christ hints at a sly sensibility, and posthumous Davy Jones vocals just about make up for the faux-Hawaiian nonsense of Mele Kalikimaka.