Although the tree is nowhere in sight, this weekend I finally got around to listening to Tracey Thorn's "Tinsel and Lights," the Everything but the Girl singer's new holiday album. Not sure if it's because I was a tad underwhelmed by her last two solo albums -- however unfairly: played "Out of the Woods" again last night and was almost as impressed as I pretended to be when it came out in 2007 -- or if it's just because the stripped down arrangements here are more reminiscent of the EBTG albums that I so cherish, but "Tinsel and Lights" is smile-inducingly good, the best holiday album I've heard since Phil Spector's "Christmas Gift to You." (Having Ben Watt on guitar probably doesn't hurt, either.) That it almost isn't even really a Christmas album definitely gives it a broader appeal -- with the exception of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," the songs are mostly holiday-adjacent, featuring two outstanding originals (including the title track), plus covers of songs by Green Gartside, Sufjan Stevens, Joni Mitchell, Randy Newman, Ron Sexsmith and The White Stripes. (The Scritti Politti frontman also duets on a cover of Low's "Taking Down the Tree.") -- yet all dozen tracks have an unmistakable winter affect, like the Pretenders' "2000 Miles" and EBTG's "25 December" did so many years ago. Thorn's title track and "Joy," Carol Hall's "Hard Candy Christmas" and Sufjan Stevens' "Sister Winter" are my favorites. With lyrics like "You loved it as a kid/But now you need it more than you ever did...We'll gather up our fears/And face down all the coming years/And all that they destroy/And in their face we throw our joy ...," Thorn looks this often-depressing time of year directly in the eye and reclaims its joyfulness for the adult in all of us that we never thought we'd become. Download the album HERE.
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