Ben Folds

There's not many people who can pull off a good christmas album that feels like it'll sink into the canon, but Ben Folds manages it with this plaintive and catchy set.

Wistful and pretty enough to be on with the family around, but enough interesting stuff going on to feel like it's adding something new. Built on an eclectic mix of originals and reimagined classics, the album examines the passage of time through the lens of Christmas, reflecting on memory, loss, and longing as it explores the variety of ways the yuletide season marks the chapters of our lives. The songs are playful here, full of humour and cheer, but they’re also laced with an inescapable sense of melancholy, a looming darkness that always seems to hover around the periphery of those late December nights.

Folds’ performances, meanwhile, flirt with the standards while stretching the boundaries of tradition, at times offering up flashes of Vince Guaraldi and Burt Bacharach while still remaining true to Folds’ singularly virtuosic brand of off-kilter indie pop. The result is not so much a Ben Folds Christmas record as it is a Ben Folds record set at Christmas, a meditation on the inexorable turning of the calendar and our ever changing selves as observed at the most wonderful—and challenging—time of the year.