Every Day Is a Holiday

After two regular albums, Mary McBride turns to a seasonal collection with Every Day Is a Holiday. On it, she fronts a keyboards/guitar/bass/drums ensemble (that would be, respectively, Joe Terry, D. Clinton Thompson, producer Lou Whitney, and Bobby Lloyd Hicks), reproducing the instrumentation and much of the sound of Booker T. & the MG's. But while the music may be in the style of '60s Memphis soul, McBride herself is not particularly soulful. She has a big voice and tends to rely on its power to get her across rather than doing anything much with phrasing or nuance. The selections include some Christmas standards ("Silent Night," "Oh Come All Ye Faithful," "Do You Hear What I Hear," "O Holy Night"), a couple of originals, and, as seems to be increasingly common on holiday albums, some songs that have only a nominal relationship to the season. McBride performs both of the originals, "Christmastime," and "Bring It On" as duets with Terry, and they are effective enough to suggest there might have been more of them. (A featured duet with actor Patrick Wilson on "Do You Hear What I Hear" is more tentative.) On two of the not-exactly-Christmas-fare inclusions, Kate Rusby's "Little Jack Frost" and Leonard Cohen's over-recorded "Hallelujah," McBride affects a throaty vocal tone, her only interpretive strategy to achieve emotional expressivity. But this voice isn't really her. She is at her best when she is belting over the band, not trying to be intimate, making up in sheer power whatever she may lack in sensitivity. In fact, some of the album's most effective songs are its jazziest ones, such as the jump blues "Cool Yule" that gives Terry and Thompson some solo space, and the 1947 standard "What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?," originally introduced by Margaret Whiting. On these and the originals, McBride provides some hearty holiday cheer; a shrinking violet she's not.