Wednesday, December 10, 2014

HEART (& Friends): "Home For The Holidays"

Rating: Live
Label: Frontiers 2014
Review by: Urban "Wally" Wallstrom

Hic. Bloody 'ell... it's the Santa Sisters. Hic. Well... Merry bloody Christmas and a Happy new year. The Santa Sisters a.k.a. The Wilson Sisters are sharing their love and joy of a very merry HEART holiday this season and the result is as much fun as watching your deranged and drunk relative with her/his traditional speech about the true meaning of the festive and various other nonsense.

Don't get me wrong. Ann Wilson is a vocal goddess and Heart are normally just as great as Christmas pudding. I do appreciate folky/rootsy/americana music and some of these tracks such as "Love Came Down At Christmas" are good, but that's actually Shawn Colvin behind the words/music and not Heart at all really. Other guest musicians include Richard Marx and Sammy Hagar. The latter add absolutely nothing to dull moments such as "All We Need Is An Island" and "Santa's Going South". And why do they insist to perform Stairway To Heaven? They have plenty of originals for Santas' sake.

Straight to the point, it's the mellow holiday version of Heart and friends and it's like if you're looking through a super glossy Disney reality lens. Harsh words? Yeah. But it's not like we have anything against their normal day job and music, it's just, how many songs featuring the word Christmas can you stomach before you go berserk? You want chipmunks? We got chipmunks. Sammy Hagar and Richard Marx are running up and down the Christmas tree on stage searching for nuts and found plenty. Recommended to folks with Santa Claustrophobia? Nah. Probably not.

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