Sheryl Crow
Home for Christmas

The Christmas album is a very common cliché in the music biz, especially overseas: more or less interesting operations by more or less talented artists; often a simple ploy to boost earnings, other times a "pleasant pastime" for established performers, generally in the descending phase of their career. In hindsight, this is also the case with "Home For Christmas" by Sheryl Crow: the perfect opportunity to show a new side, displaying throughout the record a singing performance of absolute enchantment before the cold shower of the latest album, the dreadful "100 Miles From Memphis".

Hoping fervently that the aforementioned R'n'B nonsense does not represent the descent into the infernal circles of sellouts for "my" Sheryl, let me describe this Christmas gem: an album with a delightfully vintage atmosphere, to be listened to in the evening, preferably in front of a nice crackling fireplace. The Missouri rock singer-songwriter transforms into a seductive swing diva, tackling a record centered primarily around '40s classics: amidst horns, double basses, and orchestrations, Sheryl Crow's multifaceted voice unleashes its warmest and most natural colors: Irving Berlin's immortal "White Christmas", while maintaining its underlying melancholy, is greatly lightened, enveloped in a caressing and carefree mood; the traditional "Go Tell It On The Mountain" becomes a powerful and captivating gospel, "The Bells Of St. Mary's" a suggestive pastoral waltz with bittersweet tones, counterbalanced by the playful carefree nature of "The Christmas Song" and "Blue Christmas" and the cheeky and lively vibe of "Merry Christmas Baby"; the peak of this marvelous kaleidoscope of popular sounds is represented by the song that gives the album its title, "I'll Be Home For Christmas": slow, elegant, dreamy, and evocative, inspiring one of Sheryl Crow's most beautiful vocal performances of her career.

The album, overall very varied yet masterfully navigated along well-defined stylistic lines, deviates brilliantly in the last performances: "O, Holy Night", which starts quietly and then blooms into a masterful lyrical interpretation, fully utilizing Sheryl's powerful contralto and the wonderful "There Is A Star That Shines Tonight", the only new song entirely composed by the Missouri singer-songwriter, a most delicate piano ballad, with sweet and comforting tones; to date, Sheryl Crow's last great song, which takes the album to its pinnacle, closed by the reinterpretation of a Welsh folk song, "All Through The Night", with very modern electronic sounds, in contrast to most of the album but a perfect closure for the feeling of calm and serenity it manages to convey.

This is "Home For Christmas" by Sheryl Crow: listening to it almost makes one forget the cloak of goodness and consumerism that today mars the world's most commercialized religious holiday: here Christmas is just a pretext to bring together ten great songs, in the harmonic ensemble of a stylistically studied and meticulously crafted project. Sheryl Crow shows, in an unusually striking manner, that she is a magnificent interpreter; without her voice, this album would have lost at least half of its artistic value. Recommended as a gift to add a touch of charm and crystalline talent under the tree, highly enjoyable, like any great album, at any time of year.