Christmas Here With You
Christmas Here with Youis an unusually bombastic affair that even a diehard Tops fan will have trouble tuning into. Entirely overproduced and disappointedly uninspired through almost 12 cuts, the disc is rich in cliché but poor in imagination. Even select cameos fromAretha Franklin, who rises to the occasion only to oversing her parts, can't rescue the effort. Although the string-driven arrangement of "Silent Night" proves engaging and things do pick up a bit halfway through, most folks will wonder what happened to the Motown magic that gave us all those good times.--Martin Keller