I'm not a big fan of Sarah McLachlan, finding her mostly overly sentimental and over-produced, a deadly combination. There's no denying her voice is beautiful, and I have a few remixes, live cuts, and duets with other artists that get fairly heavy play on my iPod. But a fan? No.
I'm also not a big fan of holiday compilations.
So what the hell am I doing reviewing
Wintersong, a holiday CD released last week by Sarah McLachlan? I got hooked on it when I downloaded, in a fit of perversity, her cover of John Lennon's "Happy Xmas (War is Over)," and thought it was... gulp... really good. Okay, maybe my brain melts at the holidays, I don't know. Probably that's the reason why I completely lost my senses and bought the whole freaking CD.
And it really doesn't suck. The icy purity of her voice works beautifully with the Christmas standards, such as "Silent Night" and "What Child is This," while also doing beautiful justice to newer holiday songs like the Lennon cover and Joni Mitchell's "River."
So I don't know, if you have to buy a holiday CD this year, you could do a lot worse than the unrelenting prettiness of
Wintersong. And I won't tell anyone you bought it.
Note: "Silent Night" from the CD is the free download on iTunes this week, and you can also see videos from the CD on Amazon here.