(via Shutterstock)
It’s a Snow Globe World by Molly Johnson
(courtesy SoundCloud)
If you’re a Canadian, you will be well and truly familiar with the towering musical presence that is Molly Johnson, a singer active since 1979 who excels in delivering pop and jazz numbers with evocatively soulful ease and power.
Johnson has worked in both band and solo settings, raised money for Canadian charities working around HIV and AIDS with her annual Kumbaya Festival, and has released a slew of highly regarded jazz albums including, four years ago, the delightfully warm and cosy beauty of It’s a Snow Globe World.
Bringing together original tracks and festive classics, It’s a Snow Globe World also includes tracks from her 2020 EP This Holiday Season and feels like it contains all the joy and effervescence of the season.
The singer herself had this to say about her Christmas release:
“It’s an unexpected holiday LP, filled with joy and happiness and sometimes a little blue, as we all look to a brighter day.” (Everything Jazz)
Kicking off with the upbeat bouncy delights of “Don’t You Know It’s Christmas?” which is followed by “Painted Blue” a song which speaks of that eternal theme of the day being all the poorer with all the people you love the most absent, which is echoed in “I Don’t Like Christmas (When You’re Not Around)”, a beautifully meandering jazz number that really drives the point home with a rich piano-driven emotionalism.
While classics like “Winter Wonderland” make a welcome appearance, the album’s creation was generated, says Johnson, quoted in The Toronto Star, by a fresh approach to festive music, inspired by a conversation with the head of her record label.
Well, there’s life, love, joy and family and I thought, ‘Ok, I’m going to write about that and I’m not going to cover “Jingle Bells” because Michael Bublé has already done the quintessential, hilariously fantastic Christmas record.’
That was the motivation. It was kind of a challenge: can we make a holiday record that doesn’t always say Christmas, that isn’t filled with ‘Jingle Bells’ or ‘Deck the Halls,’ that’s inspiring and joyful and happy? And a little bit pretty, because we could all use a little pretty right about now.
Like Sia, who also sought to avoid the usual Christmas song suspects in her wondrously good album, 2017’s Everyday is Christmas, Johnson has absolutely succeeded in reinventing festive music, adding her own distinctive musical stamp to the season and gifting us an album that feels like home and spending time with those you love at the most wonderful time of the year.
Songs like “Christmas in Hopetown” and “Brighter Day” summon a cosy, contemplative air that speaks to the wish we all have to be with friends and family over Christmas in an atmosphere of peace, love and contentment and easy bliss.
It’s exactly what Johnson aims for when she’s marking the day, as she told The Toronto Star in 2023:
I have two sons who are much taller than me. I just want to cuddle up with my giant children and my wretched dog, and eat and cuddle up on the couch under blankets, watch funny movies and stuff, like we all do.
A Holly Jolly Jill Barber Christmas
(courtesy Bandcamp)
Fellow Canadian, Jill Barber, has also embraced her festive music inner self and while her gloriously good album, A Holly Jolly Jill Barber Christmas, is also jazzy and whimsically, retro cosy, it leans a little more heavily into the classic sounds of the season.
The singer-songwriter from Halifax, Nova Scotia has been active since 2002, starting off releasing folk-pop music before transitioning to sounds more heavily influenced by vocal jazz and pop music.
Her love of jazz and pop finds a welcome and repeat listenable home on the delight that is a A Holly Jolly Jill Barber Christmas which starts off with “Sleigh Ride”, with all its giddy, upbeat merriment before segueing into the far more quietly celebratory “The Christmas Waltz”, which is full to the brim with a joyously happily feel which Barber captures perfectly.
Her voice seems to lend itself to creating a cosy, relaxed vibe, channelling emotion with ease, whether the song is full speed ahead or musingly chilled, her versatility evident in the fact that “The Christmas Waltz”, redolent with so many thoughtful good wishes segues beautifully into the festive playfulness of “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer” (a duet with her brother Matthew with whom she actively works) and “You’re a Mean One, Mr Grinch”.
Both tracks showcase how Barber is able to both pay homage to the classic renditions of these much-loved songs while putting a wholly original and refreshingly different take on things.
The thing about A Holly Jolly Jill Barber Christmas is that the artist somehow manages to conjure up a classic sounding Big Band jazz Christmas sound without once sounding like she’s simply doing everything that’s been done before.
That’s helped by two original numbers, the country-soaked “A Very Merry Christmas”, which comes with some delicious harmonies from what sounds like a barber shop quartet, and “That Time of Year”, a beautifully intimate song that speaks to how special Christmas is when we’re surrounded by those we love.
That sentiment is echoed again and again in A Holly Jolly Jill Barber Christmas which brims with the sounds of the season you know and love but with its own twist on the tried-and-true usual, and a creative willingness to test the boundaries of what the same-old, same-old Christmas sound can be like when you put some real individuality into the mix.
A Holly Jolly Jill Barber Christmas is a gem of an album that feels like Christmas, and which, if you’re like the reporter who reviews the album in the Observer-Reporter, Clinton Rhodes and believe “that one can never have too much Christmas music”, is a worthy addition to your collection which perfectly summons the emotional warmth and joy of the season to a contentedly joyous effect.