Little Rebellion Music

Gold and Green – Sugarland (Mercury Nashville, 2009)

Having already achieved one of their career objectives earlier this year, the release of a live CD, Sugarland  takes another to-do off the list with ‘Gold & Green’, their first Christmas collection. It’s a fun and sweet versatile record that immediately became my favorite Christmas CD. Even after just spinning it once, I already found it impossible to not end ‘Winter Wonderland’ with ‘rocking all the way to Sugarland’.

As we have come to expect with Sugarland, this record overflows with creativity and ambition, a good thing in all but one instance. ‘Coming Home’, not a traditional Christmas song and not including a lick of country music, is overblown in every way. The other original songs more than make up for this.

The disc starts with the brilliant ‘City of Silver Dreams’. The song describing Christmas in New York City has the potential to become a classic in the vein of Joni Mitchell’s ‘The River’. The imagery and the smile in Jennifer Nettles’ voice make this my new favorite Christmas song. Title track ‘Gold and Green’ is a more delicate and very beautiful song about the simple things that make this time of year special. 

On ‘Maybe Baby (New Years Day)’ and ‘Holly Jolly Christmas’, Kristian Bush takes the lead and delivers both times. Hopefully this means he will also do so on at least one track on the next Sugarland release. Those who say Jennifer should be a solo artist are just showing their ignorance as to what makes Sugarland work so well.

The classics do not get the classic treatment. ‘Silent Night’ goes bilingual English/Spanish, ‘Winter Wonderland’ gets a country arrangement, ‘Nuttin’ for Christmas’ goes brilliantly bluegrass and ‘Holly Jolly Christmas’ has Jennifer singing an adapted version of ‘Winter Wonderland’ in the background. You might think it sounds like a bad idea but it works.

The vocal stand-out is ‘O Come O Come Emmanuel’. It is possibly the best Jennifer has ever sounded. She recently said this is her favorite Christmas song and if I could sing it like this, I’m sure it’d be mine also.

‘Gold and Green’ is a fun, light and creative collection of holiday tunes. The mix of musical styles might be too much for some, but go in with an open mind and you will be swept up in the seasonal cheer.