Veteran southern-soccer-mom multi-media icon Lynne follows up her successful 2010 full-length Tears Lies And Alibis with one for the holidays. Dishwasher-safe, it mostly leans at an acoustic-centered Reba McIntyre angle, not just in instrumentation but vocally as well; Lynne is a bit nondescript but not at all worthy of the dissing she’s received in the past from fair-weather fans who expected too much. Here she knocks out a campfire-singalong version of “Silver Bells” (decorated with a bendy acoustic guitar solo), a mainly a cappella “Winter Wonderland” that made me think of the bums gathered around the burning barrel in New Jack City for some reason, a lounge-jazz slant on the Charlie Brown standard “Christmas Time is Here,” a nicely baroque “White Christmas,” and a Loretta Lynn-stylized “O Holy Night” (one of my personal all-time un-favorites).

B — Eric W. Saeger