We're not feeling the Christmas spirit (yet) this year. We usually begin dabbling in the season's music just after Thanksgiving, playing favorites from Christmases past and wading through the stack of new acquisitions we've amassed. This year, we pre-ordered four holiday titles and made plans to write them up as we listened to them for the first time. So here we are; neither our head nor our heart is fully in the game, but we designed the artwork and downloaded the cover art, so we might as well do this.
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Having been a fan of the four-part harmonies of Little Big Town since 2006's "Boondocks", it felt weirdly final when the group released both a Greatest Hits collection in August and then The Christmas Record in October 2024. We bought both albums as we had picked up every album the band has released, including 2016's Wanderlust, their surprise 26-minute mini-LP "experiment" with Pharrell Williams. Little Big Town had never met a song they were afraid to cover, leaving a series of Scattered, Smothered, and Covered music videos as well as one-off singles and bonus album tracks in their wake, including a couple Christmas tracks that were later collected on Now That's What I Call Music seasonal compilations. The Christmas Record features Little Big Town covering six tracks previously recorded by Elvis Presley, Merle Haggard, Stevie Wonder, Judy Garland, Amy Grant, and Vince Guaraldi as well as five original* compositions.
01 Glow*
02 Santa Claus Is Back In Town
03 If We Make It Through December
04 Someday At Christmas
05 Christmas Night With You*
06 Believe In Christmas*
07 Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas
08 Tennessee Christmas
09 Christmas Time Is Here
10 Evergreen*
11 Holiday*
We could listen to Little Big Down sing the alphabet and enjoy the crap out of it, so expectations were high when The Christmas Record showed up in our neighborhood box unit. Still, we put it on top of the Tower of Power compact disc that had been released in September and slid the two-disc pile beneath the monitor on our desk. Peeling the shrink off and playing it just now, we were not disappointed. Had we been filled with the spirit of the season, it probably would have even sounded better. Except for the opening ("Glow") and closing (the built for the dancefloor "Holiday") tracks, we can't recall any of the other original tracks but we enjoyed the group's takes on all the covers, with their beautiful harmonies shining brightly on "If We Make It Through December". The Christmas Record will be getting a few more spins.
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