Album: Kate Rusby, Sweet Bells, (Pure)

If only prizes really were given for good behaviour at Christmas. Kate Rusby's Sweet Bells offends against neither taste nor sensibility in its parlaying of assorted Christmas songs and carols (some of them Yorkshire-specific) into a suite so mildly pretty that it might give rise to new mythologies of virgin birth.

The usual ensemble of young English folk worthies lend their talents to a tinkling, affectless portrait of just how pleasant the festive season can be made to appear, for those endowed with the proper attitude.