I happened upon The Puppini Sisters, quite by accident, on a benefit compilation given to me by my fiancée. Sandwiched between a generous helping of bland indie and a perplexing dash of signature tracks from the likes of The Cure and The Pixies was an ingenious cover of “Heart of Glass.” The Puppini’s hilarious close-harmony revision of the Blondie standard conjured an Andrews Sisters-style shoop-de-doop that grafted naturally with the source material, and it was catchy as hell to boot.
But while I was immediately intrigued, taking a critical eye to an act like The Puppini Sisters presents a challenge. The European trio (Marcella Puppini hails from Italy; the other two “sisters” are from London) has resurrected a disappearing musical tradition that has since become the province of community theater and old-folks homes. In doing so, they help to revitalize a piece of our shared musical heritage and have a unique opportunity to engage in some riotous social commentary. After all, you can’t carry a pop tradition that peeked during one of the most pivotal moments of the American feminist movement (World War II put women in the workforce in unprecedented numbers, even as our culture’s attitudes towards women remained largely unchanged) into the new millennium without somehow acknowledging the incongruity. Conversely, this also saddles the group with an inescapable air of novelty kitsch, a quality they embrace wholeheartedly judging by their website, which not only features digital cigarette cards of the ladies, but also advice columns where you can write them for cooking and makeup tips.
So, in a way, a Christmas album highlights the best and worst that the Sisters have to offer. On the one hand, it seems like a total no-brainer. They have wonderful pipes, and Christmas albums were practically invented with all-girl vocal groups in mind. On the other hand, the generic requirements of the project don’t leave a lot of room for wry observations about sexual politics. The closest they come is injecting a little extra sexiness into “Santa Baby.” But, frankly, “Santa Baby” comes pre-loaded with plenty of sex, and I’ve always found “being sexy” to be the laziest and least interesting way of being subversive.
On the basis of the music alone, however, the album works well enough. Christmas with The Puppini Sisters features more robust arrangements than most of their previous work. There is plenty of wailing brass that’s used to great effect on zippier tracks like “Step into Christmas” (the album’s sole original offering) and standout “All I Want for Christmas.” The latter features some of the best harmonies on the album, serving as the perfect shot in the arm following a pair of dialed-down standards like “Last Christmas” and “Let It Snow.” Similarly triumphant is album closer “O Holy Night,” a minimalist and surprisingly reverent rendition of one of my all-time favorite Christmas hymns.
So in the end, you have an album that essentially is what it purports itself to be: a fun, well-executed pop-jazz holiday record that you can enjoy with considerably less winking and nodding than, say, Bob Dylan’s foray into the format last year. It’s not going to change the way that you perceive Christmas albums, and it might not send you digging through your grandparents’ old 45s looking for more, but I can see more than a few of these songs sliding onto some hipster playlists this holiday season, right in between The Ramones’ “Merry Christmas (I Don’t Want to Fight Tonight)” and the theme to Santa Clause Conquers the Martians.
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