Each year around this time my mailbox starts getting flooded with Christmas CDs, a pestilential torrent that I funnel straight into the garbage can. But it’s hard to begrudge any artist who has a following the easy money to be made by releasing a Christmas record, and if you must listen to someone singing Christmas standards, then Aimee Mann, a natural torch singer whose voice plays so beguilingly between deadpan and melodrama, is certainly a better choice than most.
— T.B.
