When Bob Dylan-- the patron saint of sneering, disaffected poets-- announced he was releasing a collection of classic Christmas songs for charity, smirkers got smirkier: What, after all, is more absurd than a beloved iconoclast embracing the schmaltziest, most achingly commercial genre of all? It sounded insane. And it is insane, sort of.
The goal of Christmas in the Heart (all domestic proceeds go to Feeding America, one of the nation's leading hunger-relief nonprofits) is hardly reinvention. These are mostly traditional renderings, and even Dylan's craggy, get-off-my-lawn snarl-- the inadvertent template for decades of idiosyncratic vocalists-- is topped with a shiny red bow (is that a hint of prim, finger-snapping croon on "Do You Hear What I Hear?"). Still: There's something silly about Christmas music, there's something silly about Bob Dylan singing "Christmas Island" ("How'd ya like to hang a stocking on a great big coconut tree?"), and there's a lot silly about the cheesecake portrait of Bettie Page in a Santa suit and garters that graces the inside CD booklet (a companion piece, perhaps, to the Hallmark card-aspiring sleigh ride on the cover). Ergo: How seriously are we supposed to take Christmas in the Heart? And moreover: How seriously are we supposed to take Bob Dylan in 2009?
It's not hard to presuppose that Dylan-- who has an entire encyclopedia, dozens of nonfiction treatises, and at least a handful of college courses dedicated to parsing his lyrics and intent-- is either deeply irritated or deeply bemused by his anointment, and is responding to over-the-top canonization by doing deliberately oddball stuff (see also: leering at underwear models in a Victoria's Secret commercial). Even the title-- eerily reminiscent of Kenny Rogers' 1998 turd, Christmas From the Heart-- feels tongue-in-cheek. But maybe that's a trap, too-- maybe, like zillions of red-blooded, religiously ambiguous American dudes, Bob Dylan just likes Christmastime and Adriana Lima. And we're stupid for presuming anything more.
Regardless of intent, Christmas in the Heart is a surreal and occasionally rousing collection of gooey holiday ballads, complete with animatronic backing vocals and Nashville-smooth arrangements. Produced by Dylan-pseudonym Jack Frost and featuring David Hidalgo of Los Lobos (who contributed some memorable accordion to Together Through Life), it's a nice assortment of hymns and popular carols. Like any good gospel singer (or stand-up comic), Dylan is fully committed: On "O Come All Ye Faithful (Adeste Fidelis)", he crows the first few verses in Latin, and on the dizzying, Tom Waits-evoking "Must Be Santa", he chirps Santa Facts with frantic, seizure-inducing certainty. And some tracks-- "Silver Bells" and "The First Noel", in particular-- already feel familiar, like they've been a part of the holiday vernacular for years.
Dylan's thing has never been palatability, and he's clearly enamored with contrast-- in this case, between his worn, gravel-gargle voice and everything else. And it's his unhinged vocals that make Christmas in the Heart interesting, and, in some ways, appropriate to its subject: In practice if not in theory, Christmas songs aren't about perfect pitch and studied harmonies, they're about slouching around an out-of-tune piano with your relatives, sloshing back store-bought eggnog, and hollering songs you learned in kindergarten and have been singing-- with abandon, without training, without self-consciousness-- nearly all of your life. It's Christmas: Even Bob Dylan's allowed that.
