The dB's & Friends: Christmas Time Again

The original dB's EP Christmas Time came out in 1986, featuring the band, its individual members, and some North Carolina college-rock fellow travelers performing covers and new holiday songs. The set was reissued on CD in 1993 as Christmas Time Again, adding 10 more tracks, and now it's been revised anew into a sprawling 21-track collection of new songs, old songs, wonderments, and oddities. It's always instructive to see what kind of sound connotes "Christmas" to a certain set of musicians, and to Chris Stamey and company, it's apparently Beach Boys harmonies and syrupy doo-wop. A lot of the songs on Christmas Time Again—The dB's songs especially—sound like flavorless meat-and-potatoes rock with a sprinkling of bells and coos. And Stamey in particular wanders pretty far from the theme, passing off solo guitar instrumentals as holiday music by virtue of titles like "Snow Is Falling" and "It's A Wonderful Life."

But elsewhere, this disc does the season justice, in a left-field way. Alex Chilton's tuneless rendition of "The Christmas Song" is warmer than it has a right to be, and his assent to the inclusion of Big Star's "Jesus Christ" repositions that song as a lost holiday classic. Similarly, the addition of a previously unreleased version of Whiskeytown's "Houses On A Hill" both draws attention to one of Ryan Adams' brightest and most beautiful songs, and finds the heretofore hidden Christmas spirit in it.

Christmas Time Again also contains originals that touch on the dreamy, drifting-off-to-sleep-on-Christmas-Eve hopefulness of the season, like Wes Lachot's memory-filled "Christmas Is The Only Time" and Thad Cockrell & Roman Candle's lulling "Christmas Time Is Here." But the disc's standout track is one from its first incarnation: Cathy Harrington's "Sha La La," which runs broken pieces of old Christmas songs through the '60s girl-group machine, smoothing out their jagged edges and spinning them into shiny ribbons.