Album review: Michael Bublé - Christmas (Deluxe Special Edition)

Michael Buble - Christmas (Deluxe Special Edition)

by Stephen Moore Thursday, December 20, 2012
2:19 PM

The wildly successful crooner repackages last year’s silken festive offering with four more tracks. But is it an improvement?

Bublé has grafted some new appendages to last year’s festive outing, redoubling his efforts of seduction.

As well as being – hold your breath now – ‘packaged in a hot silver foil presentation’ which to you and me means the writing’s silver not red, we also get four more tracks on this 2012 revisit, and – dab my brow – a five-second Christmas greeting from the man himself.

Of the new material, the elegant and refined Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire) gets a bit yawnsome, while Winter Wonderland’s peaceful entrance gives way to the brassy big guns for a Broadway finish in line with other tunes here.

The Puppini Sisters feature in a second tune alongside the cantering, jazzy Jingle Bells; this year Frosty The Snowman gets the slick and speedy toe-tapper treatment, the sisters under-used as candied backing singers.

Silver Bells’ slow and sober sign-off, with Naturally 7, struggles to leave its mark too.

More quantity, yes – but the new songs really don’t add quality.

3 stars

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