A PONY FOR CHRISTMAS – Todd Almond (Ghostlight Records – digital download)
Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩
I didn’t really know what to make of this album until I read the background to it. The album started as an idea from Todd’s mother: “Every year for, oh, twenty-something years, she has asked me to make a Christmas album for her,” he remembers. “And every year I haven’t done it. Her 70th birthday landed in the middle of the pandemic and I struggled with what to get her that showed just how much I love her. Then one day it hit me. A Christmas album, of course. And there was the inspiration I needed.”
This is a lovely mix of folk, pop and musical theatre. A few of the songs have nothing at all to do with Christmas but, because of the reasoning behind making the album, they all seem to work – don’t ask me why!
Tracks are ‘Maybe This Christmas’, ‘Ponies’, ‘O Holy Night’, ‘Welcome Home’, ‘A Pony For Christmas’, ‘Hounds, Running, Clouds’, ‘Little Drummer Boy’, ‘Kind and Generous’, ‘Moon Over Nebraska’, ‘The First Noel, Angels We Have Heard On High’, ‘River’, ‘Christmas Eve’ and ’I’ll Be Home For Christmas’.
So, we have a mixture of songs written by Almond ‘Welcome Home’, ‘Ponies’, ‘Moon Over Nebraska’ – others by artists such as Kate Bush, Joni Mitchell, with a nice touch of original Christmas songs. There is an exceptional rendition of ‘Little Drummer Boy’ that actually almost caused a tear to well up in this old cynic’s eye. I think it is because you are aware that the album means so much to him to let his mother know that, even if he isn’t physically with her, he is thinking of her and loves her very much.
This won’t be an album you play over Christmas dinner but it is one to play in the evening when all is calm and you are relaxing with a glass of the bubbly stuff.
Nick Wakeham
SHARE THIS POST:
Comments are closed.