Put your own festive shine onto Christmas standards, honestly even new tracks you pen, is an often thankless task.
Go too far towards what’s known and loved, and while you’ll likely end up with a perfectly pleasant collection of festive tracks, you’ll quickly get lost among the crush of retro ’50s soundalikes competing for the listening attention of Christmas tragics (such as yours truly); go too avant garde or adventurous and you may fail to garner much interest at all from those wanting their old-fashioned aurally festive glow (though going down her own tinsel-strewn trail hardly hurt Sia who forged a clever collection in 2017 of emotionally resonant, highly-listenable original songs).
Finding a mid-way through can be a challenge worthy of Santa trying to deliver presents all over the world in one hectic night, but singer-songwriter Debbie Gibson finds the festive middle ground on her 11th studio album, Winterlicious, which mixes up the classics with the originals, crafting a cosily listenable album that treads a pleasing path between retro warmth and merriment and a more modern pop sheen that works a treat on tracks like the middle original block of “Heartbreak Holiday”, “The Gift”, “Christmas Star” and “Jingle Those Bells”, all of which the artist penned herself.
Even on the opening two songs – “Let it Snow” and “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” – iconic tracks no matter how you slice it, are given a slighter edgier flavour, a production approach which preserves the traditional sensibility of the second track especially while giving it an upbeat sound and a melancholic edginess that is one of the fresher arrangements for the centuries-old carol which surfaced in the eighteenth-century (though it dates in different form to the 1650s).
A similar tilt at being both traditional and reasonably modern finds a home in “Sleigh Ride” – a remastered version of the track recorded for the 1992 release A Very Special Christmas 2 is included – which feels both ’80s and ’50s all at once, and on “Jingle Bell Rock” / “The Christmas Song”.
Having a bet each way often results in a Christmas song that falls something messily in the middle, but Gibson and her production team manage to stick the landing each time, giving the traditionalists an aural warm inner glow while letting those who love Gibson’s ’80s/’90s when her popularity was at its height a feeling of being heard and heeded.
Rather than trying to be festively all things to all people, Gibson manages to craft an album that sounds deliciously upbeat and merry and bright, evoking a most wonderful time of the year with light, bright pop and a sense of celebration which is what should mark the season.
Even on quieter, more reflective tracks like “White Christmas”, on which she duets with her dad Joe, where a feeling of quiet familial intimacy and closeness dominates, there is a implicit happiness in the delivery which adds the aspirationally hopeful song just the right amount of dreamy festive optimism.
Winterlicious is the product of an artist who embraces who she is, who knows we all live somewhere the past and the present and who struggle at times to reconcile the two, an appreciation of the human condition which finds poignant expression in “Cheers!”, the album closer which acknowledges how hard and difficult life can be (and which includes a touching tribute to her late mother and manager) but how it also offers moments of connection and celebration too.
It’s a beautiful way to close off an album, especially this one, because it reflects a person who knows life is rarely as beautiful or trouble-free as Christmas always promises to be, but who finds joy and hope in it anyway; listening to the rest of the album after you listen to the closing track may seem like a treasonous act against the established order but it helps you appreciate Gibson’s song selection and production in the 13 tracks leading up to it.
What it reveals is an artist who’s been around long enough to have likely seen it all, like all of us who reach a certain age, but who hasn’t lost her sense of wonder (“Candy Man”) and joy (“Jingle Those Bells”) and all the good emotions that percolate through the Christmas season.
It’s a balancing act in life keeping the past and the present, the good and the bad in perfect liveable tension, but Gibson manages to evoke it just-so on Winterlicious which is both old and new in sound and song selction, and which sits happily in the middle, actually enhanced rather than diminished by landing somewhere in the centre of festive proceedings, and delivering a Christmas listen that will add to your marking of the season and give you a chance, while you bop along (and rest assured, you will bop), to think of all the reasons why being alive at this time of year is, on balance, a pretty good place to be.