A Very Special Christmas vol. 3
Monday, December 24, 2007
A Very Special Christmas vol. 3
A+
I've been listening to this album since one of my friends first let me borrow back when it was released. I think his is one of my favorite christmas albums because many of the early-mid 90's artists I began listening to when I first started getting into music, are on it. The other volumes of A Very Special Christmas are not as strong as this either, its almost as if the planets aligned properly when this was being put together and they have been off their barrings since then.
The albums starts off with a short version of "I Saw Three Ships" done by Sting, followed by "Christmastime" by Smashing Pumpkins. This song is dreamy and floaty as a lot of their music was, but without huge walls of distorted guitar and screeching vocals, just Corgan singing over a beautiful melody of bells, piano, etc. Natalie Merchant does "Children Go Where I Send Thee", and growing up on my step fathers collection of 10,000 Maniacs, I've always enjoyed her voice and this is a great rendition of this song. "Santa Baby" is brought to you in hip hop fashion with some high rollers such as RUN DMC and Snoop. No Doubt does a great job of bringing their early ska feel to "Joy to the World". One of my favorite tracks on the whole volume is Blues Traveler "Christmas". Hootie and the Blowfish do a jazzy "The Christmas Song", and Jonny Lang does a bluesy "Santa Clause is coming to Town" that does the blues too much justice. There is a version of Dave Matthews doing his "Christmas Song", which isn't so much about christmas cheer as it is about the story of Jesus. Tracy Chapmen does "Oh Holy Night" in her down tempo acoustic manner, and the final song "We Three Kings" done by Patti Smith is weird and moody giving the end of the album less christmas cheer, and more the feeling of having just finished a solid collection of music.
Anyone that enjoys modern rock before the likes of Nickleback and any other band that destroyed alternative music will enjoy this. It adds a fresh approach to the average christmas songs without coming across as cheesy and overdone.
- Bret Phillips
Labels: AlbumReviews
posted by Conqueror @ 6:00 AM,
