Album Review: Very Kacey Christmas by Kacey Musgraves

Kacey Musgraves is often praised for keeping certain country traditions alive but, even so, the retro vibe of A Very Kacey Christmas may come as a bit of a shock. Musgraves crafts her holiday album -- arriving just three records into her career, a relatively swift event -- as an homage to the swinging sounds of mid-century modern, cannily blending lounge with a hint of exotica. Musgraves doesn't spend much time with shopworn standards, opening the record with "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" and "Let It Snow!" before taking a series of left turns.

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Kacey Musgraves continues to follow her arrow. In 2013, she built her reputation as an antidote to all that was said to be ailing country music: a traditionalist of unobtrusively twangy arrangements and a credible small-town Texas background, who was also slyly progressive in her down-home narratives. She cowrote Miranda Lambert’s deliciously vengeful mini-masterpiece “Mama’s Broken Heart” and released her own major-label debut, Same Trailer Different Park, which beat out Taylor Swift and the genre’s swaggering bros to win the Best Country Album Grammy.

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The annual deluge of holiday releases seems to have a broader than usual range, from Georgian singer Katie Melua’s offering with Russian and Eastern European elements to R&B crooner R. Kelly’s pleasant surprise of a Christmas collection. There’s also the usual bevy of country artists weighing in, a class that includes Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood, Kacey Musgraves, Loretta Lynn and Reba.

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