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Weeknd's Starboy is stellar

Album cover for The Weeknd's "Starboy"
Album cover for The Weeknd's "Starboy"

A-The Weeknd

Starboy

XO/Republic

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Album cover for Amy Grant's "Tennessee Christmas"

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Album cover for Kurt Elling's "The Beautiful Day: Kurt Elling Sings Christmas"

Like an avant-garde R. Kelly, alt-R&B Canadian crooner Abel Tesfaye (aka the Weeknd) has always sung about sex, drugs, vulnerabilities and compulsions. Whether singing about the hurt and joys of cocaine, rough sensuality, or wearied romance beyond the velvet rope -- through the haze of post-punk guitar samples and downtempo electronica -- the Weeknd always commits with a grand theatricality and a tremulous falsetto to go with his cool composure. You're rarely going to see the glad-to-be-unhappy Weeknd sweat.

The Weeknd now stands on familiar New Wave-y ground (the dramatic Tears for Fears-sampling "Secrets") with his usual menace ("Six Feet Under") and slow, dazzling quirkiness ("Reminder"). Starboy includes Auto-Tune (the breathlessly contagious "Party Monster"), Ramones-esque rah-rah choruses ("False Alarm"), and several new friendships and sounds that push the singer to new, weird heights. Speeding up his tempos, he offers "Rockin'," top-notch house music with high-riding cymbals in the mix. "Sidewalks" features Kendrick Lamar and a simple drum-guitar track surprising in its sparseness. Palling around with French robots Daft Punk was the best move the Weeknd could have made: Their melancholy melodies and swelling, ascending feel in "I Feel It Coming" and "Starboy" lifts him beyond mopey sensuality and doe-eyed dreariness.

Hot tracks: "Secrets," "Party Monster," "Rockin'," "Starboy"

--A.D. AMOROSI

The Philadelphia Inquirer

A-Kurt Elling

The Beautiful Day: Kurt Elling Sings Christmas

OKeh/Sony Masterworks

The great jazz singer Kurt Elling doesn't take the easy way out on his new Christmas album. The Beautiful Day mixes its holiday cheer with the moody and meditative, as he ponders the rites of the holiday and the sometimes roller coaster of emotions that can engulf us. This rich, sophisticated album mixes classics and some unexpected choices to create one of the most enjoyable new Christmas albums in recent memory.

The joyous "Sing a Christmas Carol" (from Scrooge) is light and merry. But wait until you hear the powerful "We Three Kings" and the moving version of Terre Roche's "Star of Wonder." Perhaps the best here is the melancholy, haunting ballad "The Michigan Farm (Cradle Song Op. 41/1)," which is based on a lullaby by Edvard Grieg.

His pop chops are confident as he approaches Donny Hathaway's soulful "This Christmas" and Dan Fogelberg's "Same Old Lang Syne," reflecting the latter's melancholia with a sure tone and emotional context.

Elling approaches seasonal material as he would anything else -- with passion, openness and a stunning emotional depth and musicality.

Hot tracks: "The Michigan Farm," "This Christmas," "Star of Wonder"

-- ELLIS WIDNER

BAmy Grant

Tennessee Christmas

Sparrow/Capitol

It has been more than 30 years since Amy Grant released her first Christmas album, which opened with a cozy original, "Tennessee Christmas." This album begins the same way, but don't dismiss it as a retread. Grant, a longtime beacon in contemporary Christian music, is also a fixture of Nashville, where she recorded these songs at her home studio. Naturally, there's a cameo by her husband, Vince Gill, who brings a silvery gleam to "Baby, It's Cold Outside."

And in addition to friskier holiday fare, Grant offers a few bittersweet new ballads like "Melancholy Christmas," which sets the stage with a relatable couplet: "I post another picture from the quiet of my room/ And wonder who'll like it, and wonder what to do."

Hot tracks: "Melancholy Christmas," "Tennessee Christmas," "Baby, It's Cold Outside"

-- NATE CHINEN

The New York Times

AShe & Him

Christmas Party

Columbia

She & Him -- Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward -- are relaxing and enchanting on their second Christmas album, covering tunes from Frank Sinatra and Mariah Carey to Chuck Berry and Vashti Bunyan.

Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You," an instant classic upon its 1994 release, starts things off on a joyous note with its 1960s Brian Wilson/Phil Spector makeover. "Must Be Santa" is decorated with accordions and mariachi horns, a reminder that Christmas is a summer celebration in the Southern Hemisphere. "Mele Kalikimaka" brings Christmas warmth from Hawaii and Ward's guitar solo heats up Berry's "Run Run Rudolph."

Jenny Lewis harmonizes on "Winter Wonderland" and Deschanel replaces the helium in the Chipmunks' "Christmas Don't Be Late" with ukulele strums and a subdued yet yearning vocal.

She & Him's Christmas Party is a classy mood setter for You & Me & Everyone.

Hot tracks: "Christmas Don't Be Late," "All I Want for Christmas Is You," "Must Be Santa"

-- PABLO GORONDI

The Associated Press

BLauren Daigle

Behold: A Christmas Collection

Centricity

You can hear the Louisiana seeping through Behold, the impressive holiday album by Lauren Daigle, her generation's most promising singer of contemporary Christian music. Sometimes it's in the arrangements, such as "Jingle Bells," which pulses with New Orleans-informed jazz and swing. But mainly her home state is in her voice, which unlike that of many of her genre peers, is rife with ambiguity, not clarity. That means an "O Come All Ye Faithful" that's more unsteady dirge than regal announcement, and a "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" that, thanks to the appealing drag in her vocals, is tranquil, cozy and flirty.

Hot tracks: "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," "O Come All Ye Faithful"

-- JON CARAMANICA

The New York Times

Style on 12/13/2016

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