Artist: John Denver
Album Title: A Rocky Mountain Christmas
Genre/Style: Folk
Release Year: 1975
With a title like A Rocky Mountain Christmas, you might expect a record smothered in banjo, backwoods, and moonshine. And there’s a little of that quality here, but on the whole, this is a very restrained, professional album with some excellent songs. Denver’s take on “What Child Is This” is worthy of being a standard, and most of the album is done in a similar accoustic style. The producer occasionally throws in some gratuitous twinkling, but it never overpowers Denver’s low key performance.
That said, the album isn’t perfect. For one thing, Denver sounds like he’s singing into a tin can. And I could definitely do without songs like “Please Daddy (Don’t Get Drunk This Christmas)”. While I agree with the sentiment, songs about Christmas being ruined tend to spoil the mood. The original 1975 release was amended with extra songs for the CD version, and two of them are badly out of place. “Perhaps Love” is unbearable treacle, while “Dreamland Express” sounds like it was recorded ten years after everything else here (which is probably the case).
Rating: 
This is a solid, unassuming Christmas album.
