It’s past time to look at an additional smattering of reviews of Bob Dylan’s Christmas In The Heart.
Ken Tucker at WBUR says:
As is consistent with current Dylan, the album operates as a further exploration of American popular song in all its forms, no matter how uncool. In the same spirit as his satellite radio show, Christmas in the Heart contains some put-ons, some sincerity, some goofy humor and some deep dives into the mystery of what it means to celebrate the birth of Christ in both Latin and the language of kitsch.
The Salt Lake Tribune gives it a “D”, calls it “ill-conceived,” and goes on:
Dylan’s voice is a unique, interesting, compelling instrument used to best effect on his own bluesy, harrowing work. But it is, and never should be, comforting, as it strives to be here.
Further evidence of the decline of the practice of proofreading in the major media. I take it that the writer means to say that Dylan’s voice is not and never should be, comforting. As for the sentiment itself, it’s ridiculous of-course. Dylan’s voice has never been one-dimensional, and neither has his work — it’s a false dichotomy he’s attempting to create, between that which is comforting and that which is — what? — disturbing, I suppose. You can be stirred in many complex ways by Dylan’s songs and by his performances. To say that Dylan on this album is striving to be merely “comforting” with his voice is absurd. In fact it’s the unconventional and subversive nature of his singing that gives Dylan’s versions of these songs their unique quality.
A very spirited defense of Dylan’s album against various critics is that of Ian Bell in the Herald Scotland. (I’d missed this, thanks to David B. for sending me the link.)
Bob Dylan Makes Fun Record Shock. Having spent time being mistaken for Woody Guthrie, or Rimbaud, or late Picasso, or Whitman, Frost and Kerouac, you too might feel in need of a break, or even a Christmas album. So here’s more trivia: Dylan’s nom de plume/guerre when he these days produces his own albums is “Jack Frost”. You would almost think he saw Christmas In The Heart coming.
Now he sings Cahn & Holt’s “The Christmas Blues” like a man building his own bar, drink by drink. He sings a truly weird thing called “Christmas Island” (with gratuitous “aloha”) as though Ry Cooder is waiting to be invented. He sings some Latin on “Adeste Fideles”, which is funny, and claims the “arrangement” too, which is funnier.
But when the talk turns to Americana, national identity, and the sense of cultural origin and roots, someone had to say: “There has to be a Christmas record”. It’s the poetry of the mundane and heartfelt. If it also includes a saucy Betty Page nostalgia pin-up and a Leonard Freed sax-playing Santa photograph in the package, so much the better. Dylan is utterly, as William Carlos Williams had it, in the American grain. Corny, corny at Christmas, corny to make you smile, is entirely American.
Sean Wilentz (who of-course is the “BobDylan.com Historian-in-Residence”) astutely examines many of the echoes, influences and resonances audible on Christmas In The Heart.
But the most salient thing about Christmas in the Heart is how much of it consists of hits written and originally recorded in the 1940s and early 1950s—the years of Dylan’s boyhood when these songs formed a perennial American December soundscape, even for a Jewish kid. “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” first appeared in the film Meet Me in St. Louis in 1944, as sung by Judy Garland. Other standards on the album come from the same era: “The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire)” (1944) later made famous by Nat King Cole; the Andrews Sisters’ “Christmas Island” (1946); Autry’s and, later, Presley’s “Here Comes Santa Claus” (1947); and Dean Martin’s “The Christmas Blues” (1953).
It is also striking that, much as Charley Patton’s shade presides over Dylan’s superb album of 2001, Love and Theft, the benign spirit of Bing Crosby haunts Christmas in the Heart. This is not entirely surprising: After Crosby recorded “White Christmas” in 1942, he practically owned the franchise on making popular recordings of Christmas music. Still, it cannot be coincidental that, of all the Christmas material available to him, Dylan has included three of the songs most closely identified with Crosby—“I’ll Be Home for Christmas” (1943), “Silver Bells” (1952), and “Do You Hear What I Hear?” (1962)—as well as other songs that were successful for Crosby, including “Here Comes Santa Claus” (written in 1947, recorded by Crosby with the Andrews Sisters in 1949), “The Christmas Song” (recorded by Crosby in 1947), and “Winter Wonderland” (written in 1934 and recorded by Crosby in 1962). In all, 13 of the 15 songs on Christmas in the Heart, including all of the carols, were also recorded by Crosby.
And there are so many reviews out there — I know I’m missing a lot of good ones, not to mention a lot of good bad ones. But even I don’t have the appetite for reading this quantity of stuff about one record. It’s a lot more rewarding and fun to listen to it. Indeed, it’s sheer pleasure for me (temporarily putting aside the too-loud mastering of the CD), and it’s really hard to erase the smile off my face from the opening notes of Here Comes Santa Claus to that great and final amen. There’s more I want to write about how I believe the album works in a way that’s quite distinct from most other Christmas albums, but that’s for another day.
