Christmas Cheer, The Boxmasters (Vanguard)

This is the band featuring actor Billy Bob Thornton, and this 2008 Christmas disc is their second album. I'd call this "Americana," which apparently nowadays means "country music of the kind they haven't played in Nashville for years." The band worked up three originals for this outing, and they're nicely cynical takes on the holiday, on the order of "Daddy Don't Get Drunk This Christmas." (That song's not on here, though it ought to be.) "My Dreams of Christmas" is sung from the POV of a kid living in a dysfunctional household who dreams of holiday gifts that never come. "Slower Than Christmas" tells how the holiday just grinds by because the singer has to put up with relatives who drive him "as crazy as a hundred shithouse rats." And "I Won't Be Home For Christmas" is because the singer's in jail. Add to those John Prine's "Christmas In Prison," a perfect rockabilly version of "We Three Kings," a hoedown take on Mel Torme's "The Christmas Song," and the only countrified version of "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" I can think of at the moment. This might be too country for some folks, but it hangs together nicely and the originals deserve to be heard more widely.