Album: Joan Baez

Noël (Vanguard)

Originally released in 1966, Noël was something of a departure from Joan Baez's usual folk ballads and protest songs, pairing her crystalline tones with Peter Schickele's early-music arrangements of traditional carols using harpsichord, lute, woodwinds, pump organ, harp and viol to create settings appropriate to each song's era.

The results are closer to classical than folk, with the "Coventry Carol" accorded gravitas through viol and tinkling harpsichord, and "What Child Is This?" (to the tune of "Greensleeves") featuring courtly lutes, strings and flutes fluttering up and down the scale. You'd expect the purity of Baez's voice to suit the religious material well and for the most part it does, though at times it's a little too astringent and lacking in warmth, leaving the album somewhat bereft of both humour and seasonal cheer. But there are some beautiful pieces here, most notably the haunting, elegiac "Carol of the Birds", John Jacob Niles's "I Wonder As I Wander", set to an evocative viol drone, and a "Little Drummer Boy" whose percussive efforts are urged along by pounding harpsichord and woodwinds.

Download this: 'Carol of the Birds', 'What Child is This?', 'I Wonder As I Wander', 'Little Drummer Boy'