Soundtracks tend to be collections of semi-familiar songs and incidental music, but occasionally the music directors do manage to scare up or commission things not found elsewhere. For this 2014 movie, one of the late Robin Williams' final films, we get two tunes from Rufus Wainwright not available elsewhere, the orchestra-with-vocal version of "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" and a piano-backed version of "Christmas Is For Kids." Ben Kweller, earlier noted as having a non-downloadable Christmas song for Record Store Day, offers the B-side of that single, a thumping, thrashy rock version of "Here Comes Santa Claus" and "Try To Love (Joy to the World)," a shuffling original that "samples" the parenthetical carol occasionally. The Belle Brigade performs "Going Home This Christmas," which treads some of that Secret Sisters/Living Sisters 50s pop ground, as does Chuck Mead's "Jingle Bells," and Ryan Culwell does some of that Tony Joe White chicken-pickin' with "It's Christmastime, I Know (Ho Ho Ho)." "More Than I Wished For" is a pop rocker by Fm Radio (really), and Anna Su channels Maria Muldaur with "Santa Will Be Flying Over the Moon." Also offered here are pop ballads "The Weather Outside" by Spencer Shapeero, "Best Time of the Year" by Alex Rhodes and "Gentle Mary Laid Her Child" by John Isaac Watters. Wainwright and Kweller fans are probably already on this, for everybody else it's a matter of picking and choosing, though this is one of those albums that doesn't let you download some individual cuts.
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