Camp Holiday
The powerfully soulful and perennially inventive vocalist Martin Sexton has made a Christmas record that really does sound like it was recorded around a woodsy campfire with friends and family (truth be told it was, in fact, cut in a cabin someplace in the Adirondack Mountains with his father and daughter who help out on "Silent Night"). Other times, it plays like a lost folk music field tape from the Alan Lomax era. Or a Burl Ives demo crossed with a rich streak of delta country blues. However you hear it, the unassuming collection of Christmas standards is one of the rarest and most memorable discs you give to fans of timeless singers like Al Green, Van Morrison or other soul men with uncompromising integrity. Sexton’s "Blue Christmas" might be the most vulnerable version ever recorded, while the prayerful a cappella "Let There Be Peace on Earth" is simply beautiful beyond words. An instant classic.--Martin Keller