Tinsel And Lights
- Tracey Thorn
- Band Name: Tracey Thorn
- Record Label: Merge
- Release Date: Oct 30, 2012
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Oct 31, 201280While it is a meditation on Christmas, it makes no attempt to manipulate the listener's feelings. Instead, with its sheer musical quality, and the depth of tenderness and empathy in Thorn's voice, it highlights the season's complexities in the face of everyday life.
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Nov 13, 201260Tinsel is a good holiday album for smart, gentle souls who like fires, sweaters, and evocative songwriting, and who avoid the mall on Black Friday.
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Nov 1, 201262The moments of goodness and light here bump up against plenty of songs that are depressing or otherwise unseasonal-feeling. You're happy to get the present, but it's not exactly what you would've asked for from Santa.
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Oct 29, 201280Tracey Thorn dispatches these carefully chosen covers and four new tracks with realism and a lightness of touch. [Nov 2012, p.106]
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Oct 31, 201280A bit Mariah Carey on paper, but startling in practice. [Dec 2012, p.77]
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Dec 17, 201260[A] selection of sparingly produced wistfulness. [Jan 2013, p.95]
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Oct 29, 201260While the low-key arrangements and melancholic song choices may make Tinsel And Lights an EastEnders special of a Christmas album, if you're planning on a microwaved turkey dinner for one this year, there's probably no better soundtrack.
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Nov 8, 201260This is the sound of a well established, accomplished singer and production crew that have earned their right to do what they want to a high standard.
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Nov 20, 201280Those who appreciate what she does well can recognise that in her own understated way, Thorn belongs in the pantheon of the truly great British female singers, and this is another worthy addition to a back catalogue of consistently high quality.
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Oct 29, 201280The most surprising thing about Tinsel and Lights might not be that it's a Christmas album by Tracey Thorn, but that it manages to transcend its genre and the season it's intended to soundtrack, perhaps because it forsakes any of the usual musical signifiers.
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Dec 21, 201280Thorn succeeds through low-key, simple arrangements and her empathetic, sensible voice, which has the all-seeing authority of a storybook narrator.
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Nov 28, 201280The true spirit of Christmas is safe in Tracey Thorn's hands.
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Nov 2, 201270Everything But the Girl's Tracey Thorn's Tinsel and Lights is just that, and you could do worse than add it to this year's Santa list.
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Oct 30, 201280The Everything But the Girl gal follows up her superb 2010 solo album, "Love and Its Opposite," with this gently lovely seasonal release.
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Jan 4, 201390Essentially, it's the super-cool but super-classy Christmas record all hipsters hope they'll find under their tree this year. [No. 94, p.61]
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Dec 5, 201263Tinsel and Lights is at its best during its most Christmassy moments, which in the context of everything else, feels a little ironic, as Thorn sounds like she's trying to avoid the holiday for the most part.
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Oct 29, 201260There's nothing here to write home about but it should make a nice stocking filler for Mum.
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Dec 30, 201280In its own downbeat, understated way, Tinsel and Lights does more for festive good cheer than any number of more traditional Christmas albums that go straight for the razzle-dazzle.
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Dec 21, 201280Tracey Thorn takes a wider brief than usual for her Christmas Album Tinsel & Lights, mostly avoiding the routine carols and standards in favour of left-field choices.
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Oct 29, 201280Tracey Thorn's fourth solo set, though, is the best of the bunch [of Christmas albums], its sparse songs home to a seasonal standard, choice covers of Dolly Parton, White Stripes and Randy Newman songs and, in Joy and the title track, two fabulous self-penned tunes.