Travis Times

Travis Tritt is a rocker trapped in a country singer's career, and nowhere is that clearer than here on the rousing rock renditions of "Winter Wonderland" and "Silver Bells." Like Dwight Yoakham's five-star Christmas disc, Tritt's album could be played any time of year and the references to Christmas would merely be footnotes. This is a tough, musically minded assortment of cool originals and choice covers, whether it's the homage to Buck Owens on the Buck classics "Santa Looked a Lot Like Daddy" and "All I Want for Christmas Dear Is You," or the knockout vocal performance of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" done like a '50s rock & roll ballad. Tritt momentarily goes quiet on a touching version of "O Little Town of Bethlehem" and "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day." But even on these two, Tritt is singing like the world depended on it. What a great record!

This album is more than just a collection of covers of Bjork songs. Different from CDs like the "String Quartet Tributes to" artists like Bjork and Radiohead, this album really stands alone as a funky, brassy, bold, and beautiful big band jazz album. It combines very modern sounds (electric guitar, drums, electric/computerized percussion, etc.) with old-fashioned jazz elements (a killer horn section, great piano solos [particularly on "Cocoon"], the great vocals by Becca Stevens) a quality of Bjork's work that I have always admired, the combination of the modern and the antique.