I listened to Over the Rhine’s Snow Angels on the advice of Kim Long. To put it as simply as I can, this is a depressing album. It is sick with virulent, contagious melancholy. One must be very careful when exposed to this kind of music not to be overcome and stay in bed for a week. Okay, that’s an exaggeration. Not all of the songs are like that, but this is far from a celebratory record. It ain’t party music.

Robin Bullock is an impressive guitar player, and his album A Guitar for Christmas delivers exactly what it promises: Christmas music played on the guitar. I’m not sure if it’s accurate to say the songs are “acoustic” — there’s definitely some reverb — but no one’s going to confuse this with Jimi Hendrix.

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.

Lena Horne represents a gap in my twentieth century musical history knowledge. I’m not talking about complete ignorance. If you showed me a picture of her, I could identify her. If you played me one of her recordings, I might guess it was her. But while recognizing her stature, I’ve never been very familiar with her work. So I’m a little disappointed, frankly, to find her 1966 holiday album Merry from Lena to be such a disappointment.

This is about as far from hip as you can get. I’m pretty sure you would have heard this stuff on The Lawrence Welk Show. But if there’s any time of year when you can revel in this kind of square, nonthreatening nonsense, it’s Christmas. And there’s some nostalgic value for me because the Christmas tape in constant rotation during my childhood had a couple of Conniff classics on it.

This is one of the weirdest non-novelty albums I’ve ever heard. Quattrottave, I learned, is an Italian a cappella group. You’d expect them to sing in Italian, and they do, but they also occasionally try their hand at English. That is unwise. It’s an uncomfortable facsimile.

This is the album I wanted from Shelby Lynne. Mindy Smith is a student of Dolly Parton and Alison Krauss, and earns high marks for this really impressive collection of mostly original compositions. Smith has a smooth and airy voice, reminiscent of Norah Jones and Leona Naess, which makes the light touch the producer has taken with the arrangements that much more important. There are a couple of rocked up numbers, but the bulk of this album is gentle and acoustic.

Some people will be bored by A Dave Brubeck Christmas given that it’s an album of solo piano. But the piano has long been my favorite instrument, so I think this stuff is pretty great. There’s always a danger with that kind of thing sounding “loungey”, like you’re being serenaded by a guy wearing a tuxedo at Nordstrom’s. But Brubeck is a legend, and his skill shines through on this album.