Kylie Christmas: Fully Wrapped in myriad merry formats
Kylie Minogue, Kylie Christmas, Fully Wrapped (Parlophone) ****
Wrapping: Beware!There are many versions of Kylie Christmas Fully Wrapped, not least multiple coloured vinyl with various sleeves. There is a fabulous zoetrope vinyl, plus alternative digital versions, and some of the early physical versions came with an added signed print. However, only those bought via Amazon include the omnipresent Christmas number one hit XMAS. Choose carefully!
Gifts inside: Kylie Christmas Fully Wrapped is basically a re-pressing of Kylie’s decade-old Christmas album. So, we get another chance to hear Kylie’s duet with Frank Sinatra (Santa Claus Is Coming to Town) and 100 Degrees, featuring sister Danni Minogue, along with new songs XMAS, Hot In December, This Time Of Year and Office Party. As if Kylie has ever been to such a social occasion!
Style: Kylie is a brand. A very successful brand. This is very similar to every other Kylie album of upbeat disco and stylish ballads with a touch of jingle bells. What’s not to like?
’Tis the reason to be jolly: Kylie is on board to be the first female artist to score a UK Number One album in five consecutive decades! So, from the 1980s to the 2020s, Kylie has been part of our lives. She is a bedrock in our society and mostly brings us great joy.
Scrooge moan: Surely fans should have been offered a completely new set of songs. There are enough Christmas songs available. And it’s a disgrace that new hit song XMAS is only available from one singular online outlet (in digital and physical formats)!
White Christmas? Although Bing Crosby’s classic isn’t on offer, we have Kylie’s versions of It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of the Year, Let It Snow, I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday and, best of all, Santa Baby.
Blue Christmas? Kylie always blows the blues away!
Stocking or shocking? We can only imagine that Kylie wears the finest of silk stockings. This is perfect fare for everyone who shares that fantasy.
Record sleeve in a jumper style: Kate Rusby’s 20: Christmas Is Merry
Kate Rusby, 20: Christmas Is Merry (Pure Records) ****
Wrapping: Artwork and design by Tom Pitts at Hand Drawn Pixels, featuring a knitted Christmas jumper front of bells, trees, snowflakes, reindeer and brass instruments, all key to Rusby’s Christmas folk carol concerts. Inside are photos from past concerts (fancy dress finale et al), previous Christmas album artwork and Kate’s sleeve notes that end with “Here’s to the next 20 years, who’s in?? Xx”.That would take to Kate to age 72…and maybe another six, seven, eight festive albums!
Gifts inside: Marking 20 years of Christmas concerts with her folk band and “the Brass Boys”, and mirroring the 20 and 30 albums that landmarked previous touring anniversaries, double album Christmas Is Merry combines 17 live recordings from 2020 to 2024 with new acoustic recordings, featuring Damien O’Kane on acoustic and electric guitar and Duncan Lyall on piano and Moog (on Wren), recorded at Barnsley nightingale Rusby’s Singy Songy Studios.
Style: Too-jolly-for-killjoy-Victorian-churches South Yorkshire pub carols (Bradfield, Sunny Bank, Hark Hark), “Rusbyfied” Christmas shopping songs (The Most Wonderful Time, Winter Wonderland), rediscovered novelty records (Arrest These Merry Gentlemen, Hippo For Christmas) and Rusby winter originals (Holly King, Glorious, The Frost Is All Over, Little Jack Frost and the New Year’s dawn greeting of Let The Bells Ring) make for the merriest (Here We Come A Wassailing), occasionally bleakest (Paradise) Yorkshire Christmas, with Cornish escapee Christmas Is Merry for good company.
’Tis the reason to be jolly: Quintet of new acoustic versions (Kris Kringle, Little Jack Frost, Hippo For Christmas, Holly And The Ivy and The Wren) and the bracing brace of variations on While Shepherds Watched (Sweet Chiming Bells, Sweet Bells).
Scrooge moan: Where is the third regular Rusby variation on While Shepherds Watched, Hail Chime On? Mind you, at least 30 spins on While Shepherds are doing the pub rounds.
White Christmas? No, not that ubiquitous chestnut, but a winter chill spreads through The Frost Is All Over, Little Jack Frost and Glorious, with its broken-winged angel in a frozen tree.
Blue Christmas? More green, red, gold and white than blue, although the brass infusions in Little Town Of Bethlehem will bring a tear, such is its hymnal beauty.
Stocking or shocking? It may shock you to learn that Christmas Is Merry is Rusby’s eighth, yes, eighth Christmas album after 2008’s Sweet Bells, 2011’s While Mortals Sleep, 2015’s The Frost Is All Over, 2017’s Angels And Men, 2019’s Holly Head, 2020’s Happy Holly Day (Live) and 2023’s Light Years. Here she comes a wassailing again, with a winter-warmer perfect for all “Holly heads” (Kate’s Christmas variation on ‘petrol heads’).
Available only via Kate Rusby’s official website, at https://katerusby.com/album/20-christmas-is-merry/ or through Proper Music (as well as on her “craft shop” merchandise table on the now concluded Christmas Is Merry tour that visited York Barbican on December 11).