Search - The Isaacs :: Christmas Spirit

Bluegrass Christmas carols by Sonya Isaacs and family

Peter Durward Harris | Leicester England | 08/01/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is very much an Isaacs family album, with everybody getting a chance to be lead singer, although What child is this and Joy to the world are done as instrumentals. By contrast, several carols are sung without any backing. The brief (17 second) rendition of Go tell it on the mountain is by Becky's son Levi, then three, also without backing. I could have done without it, but by the time you've reached the skip button, it's finished anyway.Of all the other Christmas albums I've heard, the one this comes closest to in style is Emmylou's Light of the stable.Most of the songs will be familiar to you already via other versions, but precisely because it is a family album with a number of different voices (Becky, Sonya, Ben, Lily, Tim, John), yet using the same musicians, this album has it's own identity. There are only three songs that you might not know, one of which is Messiah's lullaby, which I assume is a new song.The other two are What do you see and I feel the Christmas spirit, which they wrote themselves, so they are definitely new songs. Unlike the other tracks here, which are all carols, I feel the Christmas spirit is a more general Christmas song, though it's spiritual theme means it won't offend anybody who is looking for an exclusively religious album.This is a hard album to get hold of, but if you like Sonya Isaacs, or you like Emmylou's Light of the stable, or you like bluegrass music, you will find the search worthwhile."