I have a soft spot in my heart for this duo based on their warm and unpretentious debut album, but that was almost a decade ago and they haven't really changed very much over that time. Except that the singer is now the star of a sitcom and so the wider potential audience that brings them doesn't really encourage anything too off-the-wall musically speaking. So it is that their second Christmas album, released for 2016 and comprised entirely of popular covers of Christmas tunes as was the first one, doesn't really add anything to the holiday canon. Nevertheless, if you want to hear Zooey Deschanel cover Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas," this is where you have to come. M. Ward takes the lead vocal on a notably different arrangement of "Run Run Rudolph," very poppy and shorn of its Chuck Berry structure, which is possibly the best thing here. Other songs to note are the ethereal treatment of "Christmas Don't Be Late (The Chipmunk Song)," their version of "Must Be Santa," and the mellow "A Marshmallow World."
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