Home For Christmas (popmarket EXCLUSIVE)

Popmarket Exclusive Coke Bottle Green Vinyl. Featuring Christmas classics "Breath of Heaven (Mary's Song)," "Grown-Up Christmas List," & more, this timeless album is a great addition to any vinyl collection. Amy Grant's Home for Christmas showcases her mellifluent vocal chops in a variety of settings and succeeds mightily. There's a sophisticated touch of Streisand in Grant's clear and bright timbre, but there's also a young tenderness and innocence there, as well, that captures peoples' hearts. Grant puts a batch of standards, more recent works by Carly Simon and David Foster, and her own songs through big but tasty orchestral swells, rock & roll reveries, acoustic pieces, and mild pop surroundings. Most surprising are Grant's two contributions (cowritten with Chris Eaton and Robert Marshal, respectively,) "Breath of Heaven (Mary's Song)" and the powerful and humbling "Emmanuel, God with Us." Exquisitely produced and arranged, Home for Christmas is a highly rewarding mainstream Christmas masterpiece without flaw or pretense. -Martin Keller