Bob Dylan’s voice hasn’t been pretty for decades, but it’s seldom been as downright grotesque as it is on his first Christmas album, I’ll Be Home For Christmas. Here he sings in a phlegmy growl that makes Tom Waits sound like Harry Connick Jr. At his best, he comes across as like he's had one eggnog too many, at worst, he sounds illsome of his notes are so painful that it’s easy to imagine him hacking up blood and tar into his white handkerchief between singing “Do You Hear What I Hear?” He flubs the final stanza of “Hark The Herald Angels Sing,” singing, “hark the herald angels schhhhk,” coughing on the final word. If that’s the take he ended up using, what were the rejected ones like?
To compensate for his raw performance, Dylan keeps the arrangements of these standards as polished and traditional as possible, surrounding himself with jazzy-smooth chorus singers. It’s a shocking contrast, hearing these healthy, young voices against Dylan’s infirm croak, and that’s what makes I’ll Be Home For Christmas unexpectedly poignant. It’s the sound of a man revisiting the songs of the youth, and in doing so never sounding older.
