Hark! The Herald Dylan Sings

Christmas in the Heart

By Bob Dylan


Clue #1: Clipart cover, showing a horse-drawn sleigh.

Clue #2: Once getting the damn CD case open, the first thing to greet your eyes is bosomy pin-up girl Bettie Page, done up in naughty-girl Christmas lingerie.

Clue # 3: The album starts with jingle bells and a ‘50s style chorus humming. Then the man himself starts to warble (or is it wobble?) ‘Here Comes Santa Claus’. Yes, Bob Dylan has indeed recorded a Christmas album, and it feels like it fell right out of a late 1950s Christmas stocking.

“Christmas in the Heart” is Dylan’s light romp through 15 Christmas nuggets (couldn’t he have written at least one newbie?). And while it will certainly put a smile on your face, it may also leave you wondering; Is this a joke? Dylan’s attempt at sounding like Andy Williams? Or some kind of corny nostalgia?

Produced by Dylan (aka Jack Frost) the arrangements, with one notable exception, are utterly –if not miserably- conventional, circa 1959. It’s as if he had knocked Connie Francis off her stool, and took over behind the microphone for this recording session. The simpy chorus, chimes, bells, strings, all working across an o-so-standard Christmas oeuvre (no, please, not ‘Little Drummer Boy!’). Occasionally a slide guitar, or fiddle sparkles, but by and large, Christmas cookie-cutter stuff.

The exception comes by way of a lively zydeco take on ‘Must be Santa,’ a wonderful ode to the polka roots of the song. And it gives the album its one real juicy bounce.

And yet, the remaining songs are far from dull. It’s just a little weird to hear Dylan singing ‘Adeste Fideles.’

Sometimes he sounds a little too stodgy, almost self-righteous, on songs like ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing,’ and ‘The First Noel.’ But on most tunes, he’s loose and personal, in particular ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’, ‘Christmas Island’, and ‘Winter Wonderland’. And his growl is perfect for the Dean Martin vehicle, ‘The Christmas Blues.’

And by time Dylan gets to ‘chestnuts roasting on an open fire,’ we’re convinced he really does fancy himself a crooner.

Crooner? With that voice? Croaking, bucket-of-gravel, straining, nasal, weird phrasing. And when he sustains a note, especially in the (relatively) upper range, it’s like he’s trying to hold a blob of jello in his fist, and it keeps jiggling through his fingers. Typical Dylan of the last ten years -you can’t listen to him without wanting to clear your throat.

It reminds me of the (apocryphal) story circulating of Dylan playing guitar and singing for one of his grandchildren’s kindergarten classes, and being asked by parents to stop it, because he was scaring the kids.

“Christmas in the Heart” is definitely not scary. It’s a pretty, simple, standard set of obvious Christmas tunes, sung by a crusty old folkie. And amazingly, it works, in a time-warp, where’d that come from, sort of way.

Is it a joke? If so, Dylan plays it straight-faced, and with absolutely no sense of irony (or, is that the ironic part?). Who knows, maybe he is nostalgic. If not, as Joan Baez says, ‘give me another word for it.’

Might not be the kind of thing you want to listen to over and over again, but us diehard Dylan fans will welcome it into our collection. In any case, there’s an antidote. After a couple times through, put on Andy Williams’ Christmas album, or Connie Francis’.

They still put a smile on my face.