10 New Holiday Albums to Satisfy Every Taste: A Very Jazz-Rockabilly-Bluegrass-Soul Christmas

If the holidays often seem more like a gauntlet than a gift, at least the end of each year brings a handful of great new Christmas albums to give music lovers a bonus reason for the season. This December, we’ve found you three absolutely essential new holiday releases, in the genres of soul (Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings), jazz (Wynton Marsalis’s big band), and rock (the dB’s). Christmas music perennials like Pentatonix and Brian Setzer are also back with brand-new recordings. We’ve got something to tickle any taste with these 10 new holiday albums:

Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, It’s a Holiday Soul Party

Not since James Brown repeatedly recorded Christmas material in the 1960s has there been such a surefire set of pure holiday soul. The previously released “Ain’t No Chimneys in the Projects” is a worthy successor to Brown’s “Santa Claus, Go Straight to the Ghetto.” The album’s opening track, “8 Days of Hanukkah,” may get a little less play in actual projects, but the Dap-Kings’ funky spin on dreidel-spinning could inspire a lot of Sammy Davis Jr.-style conversions. “Big Bulbs” is a delightful string-band-and-trumpet original. Jones’s slow-burning “Silent Night” recalls the great R&B version by Baby Washington back in the day. But if there’s one track here that’s destined to end up on everyone’s holiday mix, it’s a “White Christmas” that proceeds at such a furious pace, it seems right out of a lost Ike & Tina Turner Revue holiday collection.

Jazz at Lincoln Center with Wynton Marsalis, Big Band Holidays

Here’s the album to play while you put on your best red-and-green tux. Wynton Marsalis is just part of the ensemble on this exceptional live set, compiled from Lincoln Center performances over the previous three Decembers. Big-band arrangements are the core ingredient here, although you also get everything from the freer jazz of the horn-entwined “We Three Kings” to the old-school vocal R&B blues of “Zat You, Santa Claus?” It’s nice to hear some lesser covered numbers, like Sammy Cahn’s “It’s Easy to Blame the Weather” and Count Basie’s sexy “Good Morning Blues.” The most astounding moment here, at least for serious Christmas music buffs, is an arrangement of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” that includes not just the original, depressing lyrics heard in Meet Me in St. Louis but an even more obscure set of verses written by Hugh Martin for the movie that were rejected by Judy Garland as being downright despondent.

Pentatonix, Deluxe Tracks - EP

Even though the Monsters of A Cappella – aka Pentatonix – just released their first album of all-original material this fall, that didn’t stop the only-vocal quintet from also returning to the Christmas well, to record five new holiday tracks. You can purchase these songs as a digital EP, or find them tagged on as bonus tracks on a deluxe reissue of last year’s That’s Christmas to Me. (If you don’t already have the 2014 album, the new deluxe iTunes version is a pretty good bargain now – $8, versus $5 just for the EP.) Most of the new material is standard, if imaginatively arranged, fare. But just as last year’s album had one terrific surprise in the form of a cover of Fleet Foxes’ gorgeous “White Winter Hymnal,” the new EP includes an equally unexpected choice, Imogen Heap’s “Just for Now.” It’s a poignantly amusing song about surviving a holiday feast that expresses some empathy for family members (“I know we’ve all had a bumpy ride/I’m secretly on your side”) before concluding: “Get me outta here, just for now.” Nice pick, Penta-people.

The dB’s & Friends, Christmas Time Again!

This is the fourth iteration of this cult all-star rock collection… and there’s something to be said for owning them all. Christmas Time first came out as a vinyl EP in 1985, under the name of Chris Stamey & Friends, and that bare-bones edition remains one of the most solid Christmas rock records ever. A 1993 CD issue dropped some tracks and added others to make it a full-length release, a pattern followed in 2006 and now 2015. The best new addition this time is a live version of Big Star’s “Jesus Christ” sung by Mike Mills at a recent L.A. tribute show. And a somewhat bizarre spoken-word piece by Robyn Hitchcock is certainly a draw. Personally, I miss Cathy Harrington’s “Sha La La,” which ensures I’ll hold on to the older versions. But the best reason to pick this up, if you don’t already have it, is several core original dB’s tracks, from the hilariously frantic “Holiday Spirit” to the country-fueled “Home for the Holidays” to the hard-rocking title song, which is still as good a tune about heading home as anything in the Great American Songbook.

Nick Lowe and Los Straitjackets, The Quality Holiday Revue (Live)

Two years ago, Lowe recorded a studio Christmas album, Quality Street: A Seasonal Selection for All the Family, and a half-dozen songs from that effort are reprised in this live set. (He’s doing another holiday-themed tour as we speak, with west coast dates including an L.A. show Dec. 10 and Seattle on the 18th.) So, yes, you get to hear the Englishman who once cheekily dubbed himself “the Jesus of Cool” sing about the actual Jesus, a little, in “I Was Born in Bethlehem.” There’s also lighter-hearted fare like “Christmas at the Airport,” a fantasy about being stuck inside a deserted terminal set to a “Brazil”-style beat. But if what you really want for Christmas is a half-album’s worth of live Lowe oldies, “Half a Boy and Half a Man” and the ineffably sweet “Somebody Cares for Me” will also set your holiday spirit aright. If you already own Lowe’s studio effort, the best reason to pick this up might be backing band Los Straitjackets’ boss, surf-style instrumental take on Vince Guaraldi’s “Linus and Lucy.” (Note: There’s no CD issue of Lowe’s album – just a digital download, plus a vinyl Record Store Day edition that’s mostly already sold-out.)

LeAnn Rimes, Today Is Christmas

The holiday season usually brings a sleighful of divas – last year, we had Idina Menzel – but it’s up to Rimes alone to represent that kind of star lung power this year. Last year, she released volume one of what was supposed to be an annual series of Christmas EPs, but Rimes apparently got so carried away that she abandoned that concept to go with a full 15-song album. Fifteen songs, that is, if you get the deluxe Target edition, which we highly recommend, since the three chain-exclusive bonus tracks are the best tunes in the collection: John Lennon’s “Happy Xmas (War Is Over),” Willie Nelson’s “Pretty Paper,” and Bob Dylan’s “Ring Them Bells,” all rendered with solo piano, guitar, or organ accompaniment. If you just settle for the brassier and sassier tunes on the standard edition, there are other highlights to be had there, too, especially Brandi Carlile’s bittersweet “The Heartache Can Wait,” and a “Joy” medley that’s like the “Stars on 45” of Christmas carols.

The Brian Setzer Orchestra, Rockin’ Rudolph

For a while, Neil Diamond was the reigning king of serial Christmas albums, and now it seems like Setzer has assumed that title. Only, the press materials tell us this is the ex-Stray Cat’s first holiday album in a decade. How can that be? Well, that’s if you don’t count the various Christmas live albums and best-ofs he’s put out during the last 10 years, on top of the two studio albums that came out before that. In any case, you know what you’re getting here, which is a lot of louder rockabilly guitar licks and a big-band horn section twice as loud as that. “Yabba Dabba Yuletide” gets novelty points, for marrying the Flintstones theme to a holiday greeting. It’s all so very busy that a little of it goes a long way, though it’s certainly a pep-pill-like antidote to eggnog-induced sleepiness. Personally, I prefer the tracks where the guitar gets more room in the mix than all that overpowering brass; proceed directly to “Rockabilly Rudolph.”

The Felice Brothers, Felice Navidad

Years ago, Rhino Records put out an excellent compilation CD titled Bummed Out Christmas. If they ever issued a sequel, just about any song on this five-song Felice Brothers digital EP would be a candidate for inclusion. The Americana combo has a slew of downbeat, hillbilly-flavored ballads, starting with “Carriage,” a lovely downer that means to be so topical in its reflection of economic woes, it actually includes “2015” in the lyrics – not to mention it being the only new Christmas song we heard this year that includes both the S-word and the F-word. (“Well it’s Christmas, 2015/In this s— eating corporate dream.”) The mood doesn’t pick up much in “Dollar Store”: “It’s Christmas day, whether you like it or not/You can’t turn this drunk away/You’re all this drunk has got.” Drink a cup of Christmas… cheer?

Smoke Fairies, Wild Winter

This female indie-rock duo pull off the rare feat of writing an entire album’s worth of original, seasonally themed material. Well, almost an album’s worth: they do cover a track by Captain Beefheart (!), “Steal Softly Through Snow,” along with the Handsome Family’s sad take on alcoholism, “So Much Wine.” The opening track, “Christmas Without a Kiss,” sets the tone, as the ladies tear down the mistletoe they’d set up and lament: “O holy night divine/I want what’s mine/Give me what’s mine!” The expectation is that this is going to be a holiday album so downbeat it makes Aimee Mann sound like Brian Setzer, and Smoke Fairies largely live up to that promise. But their harmonies and arrangements are nearly as prog as indie, which keeps things musically interesting. And the Santa-themed “Bad Good” introduces a needed note of rocking levity.

Rhonda Vincent, Christmas Time

Since Bill Monroe, there haven’t been a lot of bluegrass practitioners writing new Christmas standards, so it was a treat when Vincent introduced a great original, “Christmas Time at Home,” to the canon on her first holiday album in 2006. She reprises that number on her second Christmas release and adds three other newly written songs – including the similarly titled but distinctly sorrowful “Christmas Time,” which reflects what it’s like to experience your first December without a recently deceased loved one. Some traditional numbers get the string-band treatment here, too, of course. The novelty factor goes to 11 on a version of “12 Days of Christmas” that includes single-line guest turns from Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, Charlie Daniels, and the Oak Ridge Boys, among other old-school country celebs.

If none of those 10 records satisfies your needs, here are some more brand-new holiday albums you might want to sample:

India.Arie & Joe Sample, Christmas With Friends

Kylie Minogue, Kylie Christmas

Marc Broussard, Magnolias & Mistletoe

Band of Merrymakers, Welcome to Our Christmas Party

Jessie James Decker, This Christmas

Count Basie Orchestra, A Very Swingin’ Basie Christmas!

The Ellas, Merry and Bright

Chris Tomlin, Adore: Christmas Songs of Worship (Live)

Cassie Ramone, Christmas in Reno

Etienne Charles, Creole Christmas

Various RuPaul’s Drag Race cast members, Christmas Queens

In the digital download age, singles abound, too. Here are a half-dozen fresh one-offs:

James Taylor, “SnowTime”

Stevie Wonder & Andra Day, “Someday at Christmas”

Phoenix (feat. Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzmann, Buster Poindexter & Paul Shaffer), “Alone on Christmas Day”

Sabrina Carpenter, “Christmas the Whole Year Round”

Kristian Bush, “Thinking About Drinking for Christmas”

The Killers (feat. Ryan Pardey & Richard Dreyfuss), “Dirt Sledding”