You Make It Feel Like Christmas (Deluxe Edition)

The luxurious retro treatment of last year’s You Make It Feel Like Christmas gets five songs appended in this deluxe edition. Gwen Stefani’s vibrato still sounds energized and comfortable among the Wall of Sound-style live instrumentation, yet the selection of covers still skews too hard on the obvious yuletide choices. I’ll trade you another version of “Winter Wonderland” and “Silent Night” for her to bring her just a girl sass to say, “Sleigh Ride” or “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” Yet her version of “Feliz Navidad” is a delight with assist from Chilean artist Mon Laferte adding some cute back-and-forth girl power to the song. The two new songs, “Cheer for the Elves” and “Secret Santa,” are cute bits of retro kitsch-pop and make far more sense as original material for a holiday-themed album than “When I Was a Little Girl” or “Never Kissed Anyone with Blue Eyes Before.”The highs and lows of the original album remain with the five new additions proving uniformly solid. You Make It Feel Like Christmas remains an uneven but overall strong, quirky, colorful blast of season's greetings and warm wishes.

DOWNLOAD: “Christmas Eve,” “Secret Santa,” “Feliz Navidad” ft. Mon Laferte