The More the Merrier, Joel Paterson (Nu-Tone)

Rumblings across the Christmastime blogosphere have vibrated with great excitement at the very mention of this 2023 release, Joel's second Christmas album. (First one's here.) While this isn't exactly prime Mistletunes fodder, being a pop-jazz inflected instrumental album, there are all sorts of hipster-adjacent genres represented here, from exotica to surf instro sounds. And as Rudolph has been spending a lot more of his off-time playing guitar lately, there's something reassuring about basking in Joel's virtuostic artistry as he renders this collection of familiar holiday tunes, both traditional and from the Great American Songbook. The exceptions to the above are the country classic "Christmas Guitar Boogie" and Charles Brown's "Merry Christmas Baby" and "Please Come Home For Christmas." Otherwise, we get "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town," "Christmas Island," "Here Comes Santa Claus," "(Everybody's Waitin' For) The Man With the Bag," "The Christmas Song (Chestnuts)," "O Tannenbaum," "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!," "O Little Town of Bethlehem," "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear," and "Silent Night." Downloads and streaming natch, and the only physical media is vinyl.