She & Him A Very She and Him Christmas (Domino)
3/5
By: Rachel Bolland
I love Christmas. In fact, I love it more than you might expect from a girl with a Jewish mother and an atheist father, but I do. Obviously Christmas means different things to different people and each family has their own traditions. In our house, the choice of music is always pretty similar each year - we stick with traditional carols for present opening and breakfast but by the time dinner’s over we’ve usually moved on to James Brown’s Funky Christmas. In between those two is a selection of Christmas albums that various artists churned out over the years, and this year is the turn of She & Him.
For many, the idea of the She & Him Christmas record is so twee it would make them want to strangle themselves with the nearest hand-knitted scarf, but you have to approach this album with a sense of humour. Zooey Deschanel’s voice just suits Christmas - she has an old fashioned quality that recalls the classic festive movies like White Christmas and It’s A Wonderful Life. She first showed this off in the film Elf, in a scene that was far too sexy/creepy for a family Christmas movie. In the film, she sings ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’ while Will Ferrel sits and spies on her while she’s naked. This appears on the record as a rather charming duet between Deschanel and M. Ward, where Ward tries to resist her lovely charms. The differences in their voices is one of the things that’s particularly charming on the record, bringing their own spin to these covers that everyone knows inside out.
There are some very quiet, gentle moments, which are really quite lovely. The classic ‘Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas’ is wonderfully stripped back and, while nowhere near as good as the Frank Sinatra original, still does it justice, as does closer ‘The Christmas Waltz’. Unfortunately, even She & Him can’t salvage ‘Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree’, which should only be used as music in Pass the Parcel at children’s Christmas party. In general, the record is just incredibly American. It’s gaudy and commercial and has seems to have nothing to do with what Christmas is really about. But it kind of doesn’t matter. You have to come to this album with no pretentions, Yes, it’s twee, yes, it’s nauseating. But it’s also a bit of fun, and doesn’t pretend to be anything more.
She & Him - The Christmas Waltz by Double Six
Artists in this article: She and Him
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