Christmas Time is the Cole Brothers debut - a ten-track holiday album written in the soul-and-jazz tradition, built for the speaker that lives in the corner of the kitchen during the last week of December.
The album
Ten original Christmas songs, each one written in a different corner of the holiday tradition. My Dear Acquaintance and Holiday in the Air set the tone with two warm openers. Put It Down (It's Christmas Time) turns the album's title into an instruction. Underneath the Mistletoe (which appears twice on the record, in two arrangements) is the album's romantic centrepiece. No Place Like Home for the Holidays and Gather 'Round the Fire lean into the family-and-fireside tradition; That's What Christmas Means to Me says the quiet part out loud. The Kids Aren't Alright (At Christmas) is the album's most surprising moment - a wry counterpoint to the usual tinsel-and-cheer formula, written with the kind of arched eyebrow that holiday records rarely allow themselves. New Year's Anthem closes the album with a small pivot: the holiday is ending, the year is turning, and the band plays one last warm song to send everyone home.
The story
Christmas Time is a deliberately old-fashioned record. The production sits firmly in the warm, acoustic, Vince Guaraldi-meets-Nat King Cole register - and that's exactly the point. There's a place in the music year, every year, for an album that doesn't try to reinvent the genre but just tries to write a few new songs that belong in it. Cole Brothers is built to be that project. Christmas Time is its first attempt, and the catalogue can grow from here on the same simple premise: write the holiday songs that the holiday songbook is missing.