Twenty years after singing the somber Ring Them Bells, he has attached them to a sleigh, painted them silver and given them a jolly jingle.Many initially greeted word of a Dylan Christmas album with disbelief, derision or suspicion, then adjusted to the news with expectations of blasphemy and Scrooge-like acerbity.
Instead we get the Ebenezer of Dickens' denouement: open-hearted, ebullient and drunk on the spirit of the season.Dylan isn't rocking around the Christmas tree. Nor does he snow listeners by slapdashing through a few hokey carols. Avoiding his latter-day earthy blues, Dylan dresses holly-jolly tunes in bells, chimes and celesta, nestling his unmistakable croak in clouds of harmony vocals.If there's anything weirder than Dylan releasing a Christmas disc, it's that he avoided doing so during a recording career spanning 47 years and 46 releases. Snowy sets, lucrative for their perennial sales potential, have become an all-genres staple.Dylan will donate his royalties in perpetuity to three charities that aid the hungry: Feeding America, the U.K.-based Crisis and the United Nations' World Food Programme. If that isn't Christmas in the heart, what is?
Twenty years after singing the somber Ring Them Bells, he has attached them to a sleigh, painted them silver and given them a jolly jingle.Many initially greeted word of a Dylan Christmas album with disbelief, derision or suspicion, then adjusted to the news with expectations of blasphemy and Scrooge-like acerbity.
Instead we get the Ebenezer of Dickens' denouement: open-hearted, ebullient and drunk on the spirit of the season.Dylan isn't rocking around the Christmas tree. Nor does he snow listeners by slapdashing through a few hokey carols. Avoiding his latter-day earthy blues, Dylan dresses holly-jolly tunes in bells, chimes and celesta, nestling his unmistakable croak in clouds of harmony vocals.If there's anything weirder than Dylan releasing a Christmas disc, it's that he avoided doing so during a recording career spanning 47 years and 46 releases. Snowy sets, lucrative for their perennial sales potential, have become an all-genres staple.Dylan will donate his royalties in perpetuity to three charities that aid the hungry: Feeding America, the U.K.-based Crisis and the United Nations' World Food Programme. If that isn't Christmas in the heart, what is?
