Christmas From India, L. Shankar (Cleopatra)

This may be one of those Christmas records that makes you go hmmm. L. Shankar, no relation that I can find to Ravi, is a musician from India who actually has a pretty wide resume of playing with everyone from John McLaughlin to Elton John, not to mention Peter Gabriel, with whom he won a Grammy for the soundtrack to "Last Temptation of Christ." For 2021 he decided to make a Christmas album featuring two original compositions, "Christmas Time" and "Savior," plus a number of Christmas classics like "Joy To the World," "O Holy Night," "O Christmas Tree," "We Wish You a Merry Christmas," "Deck the Halls," "The First Noel," and "Jingle Bells." He also covers such recent pop classics as "All I Want For Christmas Is You," "Do They Know It's Christmastime," and "Last Christmas." It's widely available enough to sample, so you can hear for yourself that if you can imagine crossing the instruments and arrangements for the Beatles' "Within You Without You" with the above-mentioned songs, you've pretty much got what's here. Nevertheless, it's fairly listenable and you may enjoy throwing a cut from this into your holiday playlists.