Laila Biali’s Wintersongs has all the advantages of a Christmas album, without the disadvantages. The advantages: endearing melodies, arrangements as soft and warm as a well-tended hearth, respect for a style and spirit that remains attractive, despite all the bad things some people say about it. And, of course, it stays away from those (too) well-known mélodies that last for a month or so, maximum.
The voice of the New York-based Canadian is beautiful, very beautiful. It is based above all on lines between jazz and pop, drawn with harmonies that avoid the double-sugar syrup of some albums in the genre.
One exception to the rule of original compositions is ‘Iesous ahatonnia’, a well-known Canadian (Indigenous) traditional whose presence is perfectly understandable and whose airy quality is beautifully deployed in a strictly instrumental version. Also, a short quote from an arch-famous traditional Christmas song in Drifting Down Ice, and that’s about it. As for the instrumentalists who accompany Biali, the line-up is top-notch: Jane Bunnett, George Koller, Ben Wittman, Amal Ahrulanandam (cello), a string quartet, a chamber orchestra made up of solid figures from classical Canada, and so on.
A refined, cuddly but not sleepy, album.
