I just found a Christmas album that will give you the warm festive feeling of the season. Michael Bublé is the consummate crooner, with a voice tailor-made for performing merry, holiday numbers. He is a hybrid of Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin for the modern generation. He is at once a throwback and current—that’s not easy to do—but Bublé does it with grace, class, and most of all, infinite style! Bublé is the entire Rat Pack rolled into one.
The singer’s latest Christmas offering, simply titled Christmas, is a batch of standards and familiar fare, given the Bublé treatment. It’s a holiday marvel, one you will want to blast while wrapping presents, baking Santa-shaped cookies; sipping cider with a cinnamon stick floating in it; and decking the halls. Buble’s warm voice is worthy of an invite into all of your holiday parties. He doesn’t overdo it with chimes, bells and whistles, either! It’s all about that mellifluous voice with the backing arrangements produced by the genius of David Foster.
"It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas" is as warm and toasty as a mug of peppermint-spiked hot cocoa and is true to Bublé’s Rat Pack style. His "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" is big-band, old world and epic. He partners with The Puppini Sisters (a headline act in their own right) for "Jingle Bells", with its bass-heavy kick contrasting with the female trio voices. Bublé is matched with fellow Canadian, Shania Twain for “White Christmas”. They make a decent team on the classic tune. "Silent Night" is rich and creamy, a true showpiece for Buble’s voice. On "Ave Maria," he shows his spiritual side. It may be the most beautiful he’s ever sounded. He turns "Blue Christmas" into a festive room-filler. The charts are world-class on Christmas.
A surprise song is "All I Want For Christmas is You," a sweeping re-make of Mariah Carey’s bouncy, upbeat original, but Bublé slows it down and gives it a gorgeous, slow and striking makeover. He makes the song fit his strengths. Few artists can take a popular song, cover it and give it such a twist that they reinvent , but that’s just what Bublé does.
The album is rounded out with the standards “Holly Jolly Christmas”, “Santa Baby” and “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas”. Christmas, with its 15 strong songs has plenty of music for entertaining this holiday season. If you can’t tell, I absolutely recommend this CD!