by Camera Obscura

(4AD)

If it's not yet a music-biz truism that everyone in it eventually makes a holiday record, this year you could be forgiven for thinking it is one. Right now there are new Christmas discs by a motley assortment of performers—Tori Amos, Sugarland, David Archuleta, REO Speedwagon, and Rob Halford, as well as the ones here.

"The Blizzard" was first cut by velvety country baritone Jim Reeves in 1961. It's a softly sung disaster ballad about a man stuck on a sleigh with a lame horse trying to make his way back to his wife during a snowstorm. Naturally, he perishes: "His hands froze to the reins/He was just a hundred yards from Mary Anne." Its hushed strum translates nicely to Scottish twee-poppers Camera Obscura's muted chamber-indie arrangement, and singer Tracyanne Campbell neatly remakes it into a holiday tune by changing "You can bet we're on her mind/For it's nearly suppertime" into "nearly Christmastime." Since romantic disaster is CO's MO anyway, it fits perfectly.

by Bob Dylan

(Columbia)

Bob Dylan, on the other hand, is out for a raucous good time. His Christmas in the Heart is a wild swing at the seasonal market—play his "O Come All Ye Faithful" for the kids and they may never forgive you—but this blast through a standard he first learned off a Sing Along with Mitch LP is one of his most vigorous recordings ever, with a video to match, in which a wild house party climaxes with someone leaping through a closed window as Dylan and Kriss Kringle look on with matched shrugs. The accordion-led polka arrangement was derived from Texas hotheads Brave Combo, with Dylan racing through the lines "Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen/Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon/Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen/Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton" like he's been doing it all his life, which in a sense he has. Try it yourself sometime. Then go drink some spiked eggnog—you're going to need it.

by Neil Diamond

(Columbia)

Neil Diamond will have some of that eggnog, too—or, for this priceless climax of his own new Christmas disc, some Baron Herzog. You guessed it: Adam Sandler's greatest hit has been claimed by the Jewish Elvis himself, who sinks his teeth into his material as a matter of course and gets to chew the scenery good here, from "the late Dinah Shore-ah" to "don't smoke your marijuanica." L'chaim!