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Christmas In The Heart
Generally favorable reviews
Based on 17 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 31 votes
Read user comments
Rate this album >
Album Info
Label: Sony
Release Date: 13 October 2009
Discs: 1 disc
Genre(s): Rock
Summary
This is the first Christmas album for the singer and proceeds will be donated to the charities, Feeding America, The World Food Programme, and Crisis UK.
Also By This Artist: Love And Theft Modern Times Tell Tale Signs: The Bootleg Series Vol. 8 Together Through Life
Also On The Web: Official Artist Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Slant Magazine
Profoundly weird but still cozy, Christmas in the Heart paints an appealing holiday picture: chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Jack Frost scratching at your ears.
Read Full Review >Tiny Mix Tapes
Some will rank it among other gimcrack releases, like Dylan & the Dead. Still others will categorize it as an oddity, like Self Portrait. It’s all and none of these.
Read Full Review >The Guardian
The result is polished without being glib, and a sympathetic listener may find it addictive.
Read Full Review >Billboard.com
Christmas in the Heart is an odd one-a collection of straight-ahead Christmas songs that benefits Feeding America, as well as food charities in other countries. But it will remind listeners that for nearly a decade Dylan has been working on his croon-exploring musical styles that are more polished than folk and blues.
Read Full Review >Paste Magazine
Musically, it’s wonderfully bad; conceptually, it’s just wonderful.
Read Full Review >PopMatters
Christmas in the Heart is, in no particular order: delightful, silly, intimate in a somewhat phony way, gentle, cornball, crazy, dated, baffling and lovable.
Read Full Review >Dot Music
Our suggestion: embrace the bizarreness of it all. It's all good fun, and let's face it, even though Christmas In The Heart is unlikely to invoke a last minute panic in Best Of The Decade list makers, it's way better than Slade.
Read Full Review >Pitchfork
It's his unhinged vocals that make Christmas in the Heart interesting, and, in some ways, appropriate to its subject.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club)
He fares less well on ballads--here’s hoping 'Hark The Herald Angels Sing' and 'O Come All Ye Faithful (Adeste Fideles)' don’t become live staples. But he eases into 'The Christmas Blues' adroitly, and rips up a cover of Brave Combo’s polka classic 'Must Be Santa' with lightning vocal delivery.
Read Full Review >All Music Guide
Apart from the breakneck 'Must Be Santa,' which barrelhouses like a barroom, Dylan doesn't really reinterpret these songs as much as simply play them with his crackerjack road band, dropping in a little flair--restoring "we'll have to muddle through somehow" to 'Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,' singing the opening of 'O Come All Ye Faithful' in its original Latin--but never pushing tunes in unexpected directions.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone
Bob Dylan celebrates the Christmas hit parade the old-fashioned way: He plays it straight, as much as his pitted baritone allows, with a band that mixes David Hidalgo with R&B guitarist Phil Upchurch.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune
Dylan’s craggy voice isn’t really equipped for crooning, so the sometimes middle-brow orchestration and singing--particularly the use of backing choirs--sounds like a misguided attempt to sweeten a dish best served lightly salted.
Read Full Review >Drowned In Sound
It’s Bob Dylan’s Christmas gift to you, delivered with warmth from his heart, even if his tongue is in his cheek. Like eggnog, it’s something that will always go down well once a year, even if it is probably just the once.
Read Full Review >Uncut
Removed from the comfort of his own musical constructions, they often sound like a collection of rasps, croaks and burrs optimistically corralled in to what just might be words; Latin has never sounded more like a dead language than when Dylan sings in it on "O Come All Ye-Faithful". [Dec 2009, p. 87]
Q Magazine
But, alternating between the laughable and listenable, it's safe to say there's never been anything quite like the sound of him jollily croaking his way through Her Comes Santa Claus or Hark The Herald Angles Sing. [Jan 2010, p. 119]
Under The Radar
Aside from the obvious point that it is strange hearing Dylan, née Robert Zimmerman, singing Christmas songs, it is often just awkward to listen to the elder's scraggly croak making its way through commonly known carols.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this album is 6.5 (out of 10) based on 31 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Greg J. gave it a1:
Don't be fooled by the critics - this is the nadir of Dylan;s career. Truly awful!
Nicki R. gave it a7:
Not everyone will like this, and if you'll only give it a listen or two, you will never return to it. But after the third time more and more tracks will stand out. Best number from Santa Bob is without a doubt 'Must be Santa'.
Tim K. gave it an8:
I'm not much for Christmas albums, but this one stands out!
Bruce S gave it a0:
Stupid.
