Brian Setzer, an unjustly unheralded guitar player, has this knack for connecting with the redux zeitgeist. In the 1980s, it was rockabilly. In the last decade, big-band jump blues. More recently, Setzer has used that template for a series of popular holiday-themed albums.
For me, though, these studio efforts have been more admirable than entirely convincing. Not so here, as the Setzer group, indeed, comes alive on a 15-song disc recorded in 2009 during a concert in Knoxville, Tenn. The tunes retain their typically smart arrangements throughout Christmas Comes Alive, but move now into a edgier, freewheeling abandon.
Setzer shows himself to be a snappy rhetorician, yelping through every vocal tic associated with the 1940s and ’50s, then tearing off concise, cooking solos from across the same musical spectrum. That’s best heard on the swinging new “Winter Wonderland,” with its winking, backseat-bingo vocal and angular guitar interlude. Setzer is just getting started. He growls through the fuzzy blues of “Santa Claus is Back in Town,” then rips a hole in Chuck Berry’s eternally fun “Run Rudolph Run” with a sharp-edged, pompadour-creating lick.
Elvis Presley’s “Blue Christmas” is perfectly redone as a doo-wop ballad. “Jingle Bell Rock” is restored to its irony-free mid-century glory. Brian Setzer camps up “‘Zat You Santa Claus,” the old Louis Armstrong romp, but that’s OK. Is there any other way to do this song?< Elsewhere on Christmas Comes Alive, Setzer’s frisky and imaginative group turns even one of the most overbearingly cheerful of Christmas traditionals, “Sleigh Ride,” into a brilliant, charging jive — and that’s before Setzer tears through the solo with a dangerous hot-rod menace.
Along the way, Brian Setzer takes some wow-man chances and, somehow, each and every one works. For instance, he melds his 1980s throwback hit “Stray Cut Strut” with “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch,” to uproarious cheers from the assembled fans. Setzer’s 19-piece group even takes on “The Nutcracker Suite” and (no kidding) makes it crackle with a newfound get-bent sensibility.
If you haven’t yet heard this iteration of the Brian Setzer retro-cool oeuvre, Christmas Comes Alive is the best place to start. If you are already a fan, it’s is an even better place to start over. He’s never sounded better.
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