Artist: Gypsy Soul
Album Title: Sacred
Genre/Style: Celtic Folk
Release Year: 1998
Singer Cilette Swann of the group Gypsy Soul has a voice kind of like Jewel (when she’s using her round voice, not her flat voice), and she put it to pretty good use on Sacred, the band’s entry in the holiday music sweepstakes. That’s not to say that I love Swann’s singing style — she sometimes goes overboard with the embellishments — but her voice is pretty, and that certainly helps.
This is an album of — exclusively — traditional Christmas hymns, which explains the album title but which might just be a product of not wanting to pay for publishing rights. There is nothing secular here. But even the more somber tracks are energetic, and this version of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” is refreshingly jazzy and fun. The album does start to tread a little too heavily on the John Tesh side of things, especially with “We Three Kings of Orient Are” (for which there are both vocal and instrumental versions, I suppose because otherwise the album would be too short).
Rating: 
There are a few misfires, but I wouldn’t mind hearing the album again. The band does a nice job of making familiar songs sound fresh.
