Lisa Biales

At Christmas

Big Song Music

Christmas music can unite, lift emotions, and relieve anything like a salve for the soul. At Christmas succeeds at it all. If we could all just ring some jingle bells together, right now. 

 At Christmas, by Ohio native Lisa Biales (pronounced be-Alice), contains brand-new assorted-in-style treats, including “Christmas Record,” a glib show tune-like recital about the irony of cutting a Christmas record in sunny California in September.

The songs were all written with, or by, three members of a core all-star band—guitarist Johnny Lee Schell, pianist Jeff Paris, and producer and drummer Tony Braunagel. Bassist Chuck Berghofer, trombonist Garret Smith, trumpeter Mark Pender, and sax players Joe Sublett and Jerry Vivino, complete the band. Biales sings with an engaging lilt in her voice but can be tough at the drop of a hat, as she is in “Mary’s Little Baby Boy,” which opens like the Allman Brothers tuning up for an instrumental excursion but quickly folds into a swampy stomper with some greasy slide by Schell. Schell’s own “That’s What I Like About Christmas” rides a roots groove, but swings beautifully, nonetheless. The lone cover arrives early in the set with “Shake Hands with Santa Claus, a frolic through the 1951 Louis Prima tune that very effectively lights up the room. 

id this fine album. Christmas music can unite, lift emotions, and relieve anything like a salve for the soul. At Christmas succeeds at it all. If we could all just ring some jingle bells together, right now…

Tom Clarke for MAS

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