¡Something Festive! (love the inverted exclamation marks) contains the expected A&M MOR xmas stuff: marimba music, a Bacharach number, the Tijuana Brass—plus this. (Well, this plus a Liza Minnelli number that is truly beyond category.) For a while in the late 1960s—and before the later unpleasantness—Claudine Longet was a sort of anti–Serge Gainsbourg, infusing everything she sang with a breathy innocence. It shouldn’t have worked: her voice is so small it’s barely there at all, and as Mrs. Andy Williams she could well have been doomed to terminal blandness. But she had a hipper producer in Tommy LiPuma, and she (or LiPuma) had hipper taste. I don’t know if Andy would have covered a Randy Newman song, as Longet does here, in 1967. And maybe you can get away with anything when you have a French accent. (Fountains of Wayne side project Ivy updates the gambit.)
My impression of Joan Baez as a kind of schoolmarmish figure was confirmed when I saw her at a 1986 Amnesty International benefit dedicate a clunky version of “No Woman, No Cry” to the victims of apartheid. Nice sentiment, but it came off as a mom trying to relate to the kids. So I was inclined to pass this album over until I saw that the arrangements were by Joan’s Vanguard label-mate Peter Schickele (AKA professor of forensic music at the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople and the discoverer, promoter, and performer of PDQ Bach’s works). With that irresistibly odd pairing as a hook, I dove in. It’s quite lovely, with a nicely sustained mood of quiet anticipation. Two standouts are a Catalan traditional song called “The Carol of the Birds,” which sounds like it could have been written by Villa-Lobos (Baez has recorded his “Bachianas Brasileiras”) and this haunting hymn collected and adapted by folklorist and singer John Jacob Niles.
Aside from the ridiculous cover—I mean, come on: between the blighted greenery in the background to the funkytown tux in the sleigh, I’m glad Ray was spared the sight of this artwork—this album is a tonic for most holiday-music excesses.
Esquivel tests the concentration of the Skip-Jacks with his ADD arrangement of the Gene Autry classic. I’m not sure how his theological positions (“Santa Claus knows we’re all Gods children”; “So lets give thanks to the lord above / That Santa Claus comes tonight!”) hold up to scrutiny: that’s a message as mixed as Esquivel’s sonic palette.
