NICK LOWE - Quality Street: A Seasonal Selection For All The Family / ELIZABETH MITCHELL - The Sounding Joy: Christmas Songs In And Out Of The Ruth Crawford Seeger Songbook

This year's batch of new holiday music includes titles from Erasure, Bad Religion and the two releases highlighted here, so if you've played out Vince Guaraldi's A Charlie Brown Christmas and Phil Spector's A Christmas Gift For You, why not explore some new holiday tunes? Also, be sure to check out Jingle Bell Rocks!, screening at the Bloor Cinema over the next few days, for more off-the-beaten-track festive sounds.

"[Quality Street] is an amalgamation of Christmas classics, unusual covers and some newly written original songs. Ron Sexsmith contributes a song especially written for the album, along with a new Ry Cooder/Nick Lowe tune. It's the new songs written by Nick Lowe, though, that are the heart of the album—'Christmas At The Airport' is a playful take on the travel tie-ups we've all experienced, complete with Ray Conniff-style backgrounds punctuated by terminal PA voiceovers. Meanwhile, the stunning 'I Was Born In Bethlehem' unfolds as an inventive retelling of the nativity. Lowe says, 'It’s this amazing story that everyone knows, but I was trying to write it as if you'd met Jesus on a plane, and he just started chatting away about that night. I tried to make it very conversational and sort of matter of fact.'" - Rockshot UK

"The Sounding Joy is a spirited collection of folk carols drawn from Ruth Crawford Seeger’s 1953 songbook American Folk Songs For Christmas. Featuring Elizabeth Mitchell and a luminary list of her musical family, friends, and neighbors, this album celebrates the spirit of community and homespun traditions that existed in times before the commercialization of Christmas. Natalie Merchant, Aoife O’Donovan, Amy Helm, John Sebastian, Dan Zanes, Happy Traum, and many others including special guest Peggy Seeger all add their voices to pay tribute to a collection revered in the canon of American Music." - Smithsonian Folkways