Chilly Gonzales – A Very Chilly Christmas (Vinyl LP)

Christmas music: a peculiar genre that offers everything from solemnity to exuberance. Christmas carols are beloved, largely uncontested vessels for emotion and memory, gratitude and generosity. Enter Chilly Gonzales. From feudal oldies to newer holiday pop canon, 2020’s A Very Chilly Christmas surveys a broad scope of seasonal repertoire and sentiment. There’s grandeur and solemnity, there’s austerity and merriment, and there’s Mariah Carey. With his unabashed loyalty to melody, Gonzales’ approach deftly navigates the myth of one shared songbook with a collection that opts for nuance over pomp.

From Wenceslas to Wham, the great revelation of this collection is the restrained, distilled beauty of Gonzales’ signature minor key interpretations. A Very Chilly Christmas finds its star in “The Banister Bough,” the album’s sole original song. This tinseled, sugar-plum collaboration with Feist balances delicate whimsy with an ecological message in disguise as a home decorating tutorial. The song gently encourages us to reimagine traditions, those we claim and those we inherit, for the generations to come. Another album standout is the cover of “Snow Is Falling In Manhattan” by David Berman, a fellow Christmas-loving Jew. Jarvis Cocker’s fireside vocals and Feist’s ember-afterglow chorus are nestled amongst Gonzales’ piano and a flute. From solo arrangements to intricate, delicate additions of strings, bells, choir and more, A Very Chilly Christmas also features Gonzales’ frequent stage and studio collaborator, cellist Stella Le Page.

As a whole, the album’s gift is the space it creates for quieter moments amid the flurry and noise of the season.