Pop

An Americana Christmas

Various Artists

(New West)

★★★★

Many of the finest Christmas songs are the sad ones. Being without your baby on the big day is a common theme, so the weary voices on this compilation of seasonal country music are well suited to the regretful aftermath of any parties you may be attending. No matter how bad you have it, you’re doing better than Corb Lund on Just Me and These Ponies (for Christmas This Year). Elsewhere, Valerie June manages to make Winter Wonderland sound fresh with a hand-clapping makeover, and bigger names include Johnny Cash intoning about the animals of Bethlehem and Emmylou Harris blessing The First Noel with celestial harmonies. Bob Dylan’s strangest moment is present — his polka song Must Be Santa — and all the twanging guitars make a welcome change from sleigh bells.

David Smyth

Christmas Joy in Full Measure

Various Artists

(Hand of Glory)

★★★

What happened to the Christmas single? Between 1970 and 1990, 10 British Christmas number ones had an explicitly festive theme. Unless you count 2004’s Band Aid 20 reboot, none has since. Mary Epworth, of Hand of Glory records, has decided to redress this by commissioning a dozen fresh Christmas songs from various indie chums. None will come close to No 1, of course, but Epworth’s own spangly piece of electronica, The Wolf and the Woods, with its wistful references to mistletoe, is an instant classic, while Papernut Cambridge capture a little boreal wonder with 93 Million and One. Elsewhere, cynicism pervades: The Count of Chateau Noir and Jon Epworth are pointedly atheist, while Aliens Pat’s effort begins: “Santa fell down the chimney/Broke his back and died.” Cute! But a dozen middling indie songs about Christmas are still a dozen middling indie songs.

Richard Godwin

Saint Etienne Presents: Songs for a London Winter

Various Artists

(Croydon Municipal/Cherry Red)

★★★★

Saint Etienne’s I Was Born on Christmas Day is one of the few decent festive songs of the modern era, so the indie-pop veterans are well placed to curate this compilation. The B-side to that 1993 single was a cover of Billy Fury’s crooning ballad My Christmas Prayer, and the original makes an appearance on this selection of tinsel-clad tunes — including some vinyl rarities — from the 1950s and 1960s. Nina & Frederik’s Christmas Time in London Town is a kitschy winter warmer, Get Lost Jack Frost is a glimpse of composer John Barry’s rock ’n’ roll years and jazzer Johnny Dankworth’s Winter Wail will get your party swinging. It’s an entirely homegrown collection of vintage tunes that makes a refreshing change from tired old Slade, Wham! and Shakin’ Stevens.

Andre Paine

Idina Menzel

Christmas Wishes

(Warner Bros)

★★

Best known for singing the Frozen soundtrack’s splendid children’s party staple Let It Go, Idina Menzel, right, has been a Broadway queen for most of this century. Not surprisingly, then, Christmas Wishes is a technically perfect but frigidly soulless affair which has the air of an overwrought, gritted-teeth audition for a minor Sondheim piece. Notes are clung onto like life-rafts, while any sense of cheeky fun in All I Want For Christmas Is You is exorcised as ruthlessly as the mystery of Joni Mitchell’s once-evocative River and the wonder of Do You Hear What I Hear? Not entirely unsurprisingly, Michael Bublé and Kenny G guest before she tramples loudly over Silent Night and turns White Christmas anaemic.

John Aizlewood

Jazz

Nils Landgren

Christmas With My Friends IV

(ACT)

★★★★

The Scandinavians know how to do Christmas, just as they know how to do cool, intimate jazz. So it’s probably no wonder that Swedish trombonist, singer and bandleader Nils Landgren has created a successful niche with festive compilations that are, well, cool and intimate. Packaged in tinsel-tastic green and silver, this fourth volume, the first recorded in a studio, features the same seven friends as on previous albums. Friends such as soprano Jeanette Köhn, lending her crystalline vocals to the traditional German carol Maria durch ein Dornwald ging, and Johann Norberg performing his own pretty Icicles on the kantele, a Finnish dulcimer. Familiar fare — Last Christmas, Santa Claus Is Coming to Town and What a Wonderful World — comes spare and schmaltz-free. The highlight? A swinging take on Odessa’s If Anybody Asks You, with voice, bass, harmonica and trombone bringing in some Scandinavian gospel.

Jane Cornwell