Reviewed by Brendan O'Regan

This Christmas album is so good you'd be quite willing to listen to it in summer and put up with the weird looks from those around. It's so hard to do something original with the familiar Christmas material, but this Southern Californian pop band have done it. This album started as a five-song EP, but subsequently expanded to a full album. The original "This Year" ranks among the best New Year songs you are likely to hear with telling lyrics, "This year we can love our enemies/Even though we don't agree". Voices, acoustic instruments and harmonies are all top class while the opener "O Come O Come Emmanuel" has some delightfully deft guitar and piano. The inclusion of non-Christian songs "My Favourite Things" and "White Christmas" knock the rating down a square though in truth even here the arrangements are fresh. So it looks like I'll be playing this until January 2014. Meanwhile I'm off to suss out their other albums.

The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those held by Cross Rhythms. Any expressed views were accurate at the time of publishing but may or may not reflect the views of the individuals concerned at a later date.

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