Gold And Green
The country band Sugarland has been one of more critically and commercially successful new bands out of Nashville during the last five years.
The Grammy-winning duo of Jennifer Nettles and Kristian Bush has just released their first Christmas album, Gold and Green, which contains five original songs and five traditional Christmas melodies.
The first song, "City of Silver Dreams," is a pretty ballad about Christmas in New York, but like several of the original songs, it’s just not very Christmas-y. With the exception of some late arrival jingle bells, the instrumentation could belong to just about any country song, and even the lyrics don’t capture the holidays all that well. It’s a good and catchy song, just not a good Christmas song.
"Winter Wonderland" is one of the best songs on the disc, and gives this old classic a good honky tonk treatment, with lots of swagger and playful snarl.
"Holly Jolly Christmas" starts off with jingle bells and is sung by Bush. It’s less energetic than the Burl Ives original, making you feel like you need to speed it up from 33 to 45 rpm. In a misguided move, in the middle of the song they do a mashup with Nettles singing Winter Wonderland. I honestly thought I had a defective CD where the sound was somehow bleeding in from the earlier song. Had they skipped the Winter Wonderland and added a little bounce, the song would have been better.
"Coming Home" is a good country gospel song but once again, it doesn’t have much holiday feel to it. It’s just a song about a woman returning home and telling her family to set the table for her. It would have been more appropriate on a regular Sugarland disc, except for a casual mention of an angel on top of the tree near the end.
"Gold and Green" has lots of Holiday lyrics, but is a rather boring acoustic guitar ballad that sounds a bit like that Anne Murray dirge, "You Needed Me." The song needs a shot of Red Bull, which it finally gets when Nettles throws in a bit of the First Noel. It’s a welcome but fleeting injection of Christmas into the song.
"Maybe Baby (New Year’s Day)" with Bush on lead vocals again sounds like a Springsteen or Steve Earle song, with swirling keyboards, strumming guitars. Aside from a few holiday lyrics interspersed here and there, it would probably also fit better on one of their regular albums.
"Nuttin’ for Christmas" is a traditional, rollicking country song about a girl who’s convinced she’s going to come up empty on Christmas morning because someone’s been snitching on her for everything she’s done bad all year. Kids will enjoy the list of her various wrong-doings, but oddly there’s no pay-off at the end letting listeners know she wasn’t rejected by Santa after all.
"O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" performed here on a banjo is a dreary and mournful lament that has always sounded more like a song for Halloween than Christmas. It’s one of the few utterly joyless Christmas songs and plods along like it’s being sung by ghosts in a cemetery. Their banjo version makes it sound like a song in a Ken Burns documentary being sung to dead and dying soldiers on a Civil War battlefield.
"Little Wood Guitar" captures the essence of Christmas morning, with new bikes, going to church, and breakfast cooking in the kitchen. Nettles sings of her most precious gift, a small guitar that ended up changing her life.
The acoustic guitar ballad "Silent Night" highlights the beauty and clarity of Nettles’ voice. In a welcome move, she sings a chorus of it in Spanish, which works well and freshens it up a bit.
Sugarland have been a critical and fan favorite for the past five years, and I’m anxious to hear more of their music, but with the exception of two or three songs, "Gold and Green" doesn’t add much magic to the holiday season.
by Sugarland
Label: UMG Nashville. release Date: Oct. 13, 2009. Price: $13.98. ASIN: B002N2XZKU
