Holiday Songs and Lullabies

Shawn Colvin's seasonal album is in effect a musical adaptation of the children's book Lullabies & Night Songs, which, like the CD, features illustrations by Maurice Sendak. As such, it includes mostly traditional tunes, along with some Christmas standards such as "Silent Night" and "Christmas Time Is Here," and several Alec Wilder compositions and arrangements, among them settings of lyrics by Robert Louis Stevenson and Rudyard Kipling. Often employing a string quartet, Colvin turns in calm but deeply felt performances of the songs for a set appropriate for putting the children to sleep on Christmas Eve.