I wish you a merry Christmas album

Why am I not already a fan of Andrew Bird? He chose one of my favorite Bible words, "Hark!," as the title for his first Christmas album.

[Excursus: Words such as "hark" and "lo" are amongst the most wonderful of all Bible words because they mean something like "Hey! Pay attention! I am about to announce glad tidings of great joy!" Amongst the crimes of recent Bible translations is the indefensible choice to not translate these terms from the Greek or Hebrew, and instead simply drop them from the text. Only good things follow when someone says, "Hark!"]

As Christmas albums go, it's a relatively low-key affair. There's a slight note of melancholy, but in my opinion lands pretty well on the "quiet joy of a snowy Christmas morning with a hot cup of coffee before the children wake up screaming" mark. A few of Bird's covers and originals are atypical (ex. John Cale's "Andalucia"), but all are emotionally evocative. I don't know what John Prine's "Souvenirs" is doing on a Christmas album, but Andrew Bird renders it pretty cheerful.

I don't know whether this qualifies as a cover or an original: Bird has written his own lyrics to the tune of "Greensleeves." Maybe "Greenwine" will become a new standard.

Bird also makes one of the bravest moves possible on a Christmas album: he covers two Vince Guaraldi compositions from the latter's legendary A Charlie Brown Christmas ("Christmas Is Coming" and "Skating"). He's respectful, yet avoids falling into the trap of slavish imitation and puts his own spin on the pieces.

Hark! deserves to go into heavy rotation as you're doing your Christmas baking. Ho ho ho and all that.