Nick & Simon - Christmas With Nick & Simon

56 DAYS UNTIL CHRISTMAS!!

Buy Christmas With Nick and Simon here (Amazon UK)

It may have actually been released last year, but I'm here to tell you why ace pop duo Nick & Simon's festive album (Christmas with Nick & Simon) is an enduring seasonal delight that you need in your collection to enjoy year after year. It is packed with classic and contemporary spins on all your holiday favourites - including some that aren't wheeled out as much as they should be when Christmas rolls around. And as with any good party, they've invited some friends along for the ride to give it a joyous, convivial sing-a-long atmosphere that draws the listener into the heart of every song. It's positively brimming with yuletide cheer - and even the more introspective moments, that the long December nights inevitably bring, are filled with hope and optimism for the future. Here are some of the highlights...

The album opens with the Grinch classic, It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas. It's the perfect produced song that sets the tone for the rest of the album - live sounding orchestral instrumental, swirling chimes and bells fluttering down around the music like delicately falling snowflakes and earnest & enthusiastic vocals from the duo themselves. You are instantly transported back to simpler times and the magic really infuses the singing (particularly when those glorious 40-esque radio girl group backing vocalists join in). It has the effect of painting a vivid seasonal scene for the listener by tapping into their most treasured memories by our boys performing with such gleeful delight. This continues on next track, effervescent standard Santa Claus Is Coming To Town. Shuffling sleigh bells ring along side vibrant horns while the lads deliver a playful singing style that dances with mischievous delight alongside the seductive music. When they sing "be good for goodness sake", you can almost hear the wink in the voice - putting so much of their personalities into these well known songs makes it something new and exciting to listen to. It's also the ideal song to get your party started - as is the triumphant rousing Best Time Of The Year (which was wisely a single in their homeland last year). It feels inspired by the great sounds of Stock Aitken and Waterman (is that a Kylie reference when they sing "children sing especially for you"?!) and chugs along at a heady pace thanks to a giddy percussion that glides through the night as if pulled by those fabled reindeers themselves. Finger-clicking, jazz inflected majesty that is all too hard to shake off once you've heard it - and neither do you or should you want to :)

There are a number of duets on the album that add some texture and harmony to the proceedings. At Christmas Time features Miss Montreal and her dulcet tones blends with Simon's timbre like honey melting into hot chocolate. It's a song about how the season can be dulled if you don't have someone special to share it with, but how (like love itself) everything becomes intensified when there is someone special by your side. The chorus is a mellifluous dream, the type of musical refrain that restores your faith in pop - beautifully sung with a sincerity that can't be faked by studio trickery, vocoders or synth driven beats. There's a purity to it that's quite delightful. Nick teams up with Matt Simons on Give Me Back My Christmas, where this organic approach to the music continues. It's a more mid-tempo track heavy on introspection and reflection yet no less mesmerising than any of the other songs on the album. Both guys give nothing less than melancholy emotion that tugs at your heart strings - it's when the choir of angels (probably) gently sings, as if looking down from the heavens, at the end of the song that you know our boys will be a-ok. It's the little touches like this that really make the album sparkle like the brightest star.

More duet dynamism happens when Katie Melua turns up and bringgs her coquettish charms to Baby, It's Cold Outside. Nick is a debonair raconteur and imbues his performance with such suave and elegance that you can literally picture him loosening his bow tie and undoing that top button as he pours a stiff brandy for himself whilst singing along. Now that's multi-tasking. Katie is glorious as the 50s Hollywood film star vixen, their eternal, carefully orchestrated dance positively sizzles with tantalising chemistry. That brief interlude of music before the final few moments of the song adds to the story by giving the illusion of Katie's teasing reticence and Nick's rogue-ish flirtation finally working. Cut, print, grammy! Simon seduces in a much different way when Sandra Van Niuewland accompanies him on the riveting Christmas In Our Hearts. It's a song about making the most of what you've got and how that little can be a lot when someone is with you (a semi-sequel companion piece to At Christmas Time). They are like a couple of cool kats at the Kit Kat Klub, giving jazz realness with a percolating charisma. The melisma and ad-libs at the end of the song provides spine tingling bon-vivance!

There are a couple of songs in their native Dutch. Pak van mijn hart (loosely translated Load Off My Mind?) is a rollicking knees up track with a group choir singalong that mirrors the galloping nature of the song. Even if you can't sing a long because, like me, you don't speak Dutch, those hammond organs and hand-clap beats are so intoxicating that you can't help but kick up your heals, dance along and shake it out like you don't have a care in the world. And music that can do that truly is universal, whatever language it is sung in. Vrolijk Kerstfeest (which actually does mean Merry Christmas) is the closing track to the album and leaves you on an uplifting high. Again, Nick & Simon put such nuanced sentiment into their voices that you don't need to know what they are singing - the feelings of the music carries the message with surprising ease and agility. (Plus these tracks do make me feel quite multi-lingual and smart when I manage to sing a long to certain parts. WIN!)

I love a Boney M cover so I'm more than happy that Mary's Boy Child turns up. It's less frenetic than the well known disco version, but the fluidity of the music allows Nick & Simon to tease out the candor and spiritual nature of the narrative. It accentuates the goodwill of the song and the mid-tempo groove of the song really showcases their vocal ability. It's a good place to point out the diversity of our guys, who don't just sing the songs. You get the impression they really study what the song needs, what they can bring to the music and then construct the score in a way that is unique to them. And as pleased I am by the Boney M cover, I'm ecstatic they covered Cliff Richard's Mistletoe and Wine. Originally the Christmas number one for Sir Cliff Richard in 1988, it's aged like a fine class of the titular beverage and embodies everything one could hope for in a seasonal song. It's a fairly faithful cover of the song although the guys do add in their own flourishes (more prominent percussion and swirling strings in verse two) that accentuate the sentiment of the tune perfectly. Their smooth vocal style is perfectly suited for the song and there is an earnest conviction to their singing that brings out the magic in the lyrics brilliantly. The middle 8 provides some wonderfully textured harmonies, a sweeping orchestral accompaniment and delicious choir backing vocals that make it feel like a little bit of Christmas sparkle glitters through your speakers and into your life, uplifting you with a euphoric majesty that is all too hard to resist. That final key change before one more run through the ebullient chorus is both exhilarating and gratifying.

Let It Snow brings back that feeling of being in a sumptuous old Hollywood musical. Nick and Simon are your gracious congenial hosts, guiding you through the exuberant nature of the instrumental by keeping a steady rudder on that addictive melodic refrain. Their devil-may-care inflections make this the perfect follow up to their early take on Baby, It's Cold Outside (and demonstrates how thematic the album is - a given, considering it's all Christmas music - and how these hidden nuances really make it shimmy). When they take on Shakin' Stevens Merry Christmas Everyone, it's a continued endorphin rush of good times and happy memories that radiate and glimmer from every note and beat that the song has to offer. To borrow a phrase from Elf the Musical, it really doesn't get any more #sparklejollytwinklejingly than this :) Except possibly on Santa's Party - a song so deliriously rock 'n' roll, a song so stupendously addictive, a song so emphatically cheerful that you will want to raise your hands to the sky and testify along with the chaps. It's certainly an invite that you won't want to refuse - and it will be a wonderful December because of this song (and by extension, this very album). Knees up and get your jollies on!

As the album draws to a close, I can't say that I was expecting a cover of the Bieb's Mistletoe yet amazingly Nick & Simon make it work for them. Yes, even the "shorty with you" bits which may be the most ridiculous Christmas lyric ever (though what is Christmas if not a time for embracing the ridiculous and sublime?!) The song's highlight comes during the bridge when it becomes more of a traditional carol and adding some resonant strings makes it just an exquisite moment. And that brings us to Christmas Time With You - almost like a final ode to the listener who has accompanied the lads on this journey. It's a song that encapsulates all the child like wonder and awe that Christmas brings, is as epic and grandiose as anything else on the album - and definitely gets extra points for having as many key changes as Beyonce's Love On Top :D If you are not thoroughly saturated in festive merriment by now then you need to check your pulse you grinchy scrooge. Christmas With Nick & Simon is just a lovely experience to be had again and again.

Ghosts of Christmas past:

• 30th October 2014 ~ Kat Tingey, Ring Out Wild Bells
• 30th October 2013 ~ Jordin Sparks, Christmas Time To Me