Northern Lights

Gretchen Peters looks to winter with Northern Lights First holiday album to be released October 21 If a holiday album is usually little more than an occasion for tossing together a dozen cheery, well-known songs and a few shakes of the jingle bells just to have another product to sell at the prime shopping time of year, then Gretchen Peters' latest recording, Northern Lights, is of an entirely different breed. The CD, her sixth, and marks the first time Peters-an acclaimed artist and hit songwriter, whose 2007 set, Burnt Toast & Offerings, is an introspective tour de force-has captured the essence of a wintry season all on one disc. Peters and her longtime collaborator Barry Walsh took no shortcuts in making the album. As a result, it comes off not as a disposable Christmas-themed compilation, but a deeply satisfying retreat that does justice to the rich range of emotion that winter inspires-not just the joy, but the awe and sadness too. Northern Lights is built around three Peters originals: quot;December Child,quot; a meditative, gracefully-strummed waltz that imagines Mary's motherly anxiousness for her baby's future, the ethereally gliding quot;Waitin' On Maryquot;-which features the divine harmonies of Matraca Berg and Suzy Bogguss-and the title track, an aching piano and cello ballad. quot;I wondered if I could be honest, as a writer, about the melancholy that many people feel at Christmas,quot; Peters says. quot;We all tend to reflect at the end of the year-and our reflections quite naturally include loss and regret, as well as gratitude and happiness. It seems almost taboo to write a Christmas song that makes room for that sense of loss, but that's what I was going for in the song 'Northern Lights' and on the record in general. I wanted to make a Christmas record that you could listen to at night when you're all alone and not come away feeling depressed, but instead feeling moved by the whole of human experience-not just the happy parts.quot; Peters handpicked masterfully written songs by Gordon Lightfoot (quot;Song For a Winter's Nightquot;) and by Kim Richey and Will Kimbrough (quot;Careful How You Goquot;). Kimbrough lent his voice and bouzouki playing to the latter. Instead of doing typical carols and Christmas songs in warmed-over ways, Peters carefully selected songs with an air of mystery, and, with Walsh, set about giving them new life. Peters and Walsh gave quot;I Wonder As I Wanderquot; a unique modal blues tint, and, in an especially imaginative move, they set the austere elegance of the medieval quot;Coventry Carolquot; against the more modern sounds of the prelude (reminiscent of trumpets over 1940s radio airwaves) and instrumental interludes (the lapping and receding of Walsh's B-3 organ). quot;I was trying to get something that sounded like what you'd hear coming out of your radio late in December in the hinterlands of England, just after Winston Churchill had given a wartime speech on the BBC,quot; Peters offers. The stately traditional carol quot;Angels We Have Heard on Highquot; became quot;(Charlie's) Angels,quot; a swinging, 6/8 jazz number, interwoven with a jaunty quot;Skatingquot; riff from Vince Guaraldi's quot;Charlie Brown Christmas.quot; Notes Peters, quot;We called it '(Charlie's) Angels' as a little tip of the hat to Charles Schulz and his alter-ego Charlie Brown.quot; The whole album-making journey began with an impromptu session in a U.K. hotel room that yielded a luxurious, accordion-sweetened take on another Guaraldi tune, quot;Christmas Time Is Here.quot; The entire 12-track affair has an organic, living room sor