Reviewed by Paul Poulton

Are you in the "I hate Christmas CDs" camp, or out of it? I always thought I was outside of it, and hearing the first track on 'A Mary Mary Christmas' confirmed that view. What a gutsy, Latin-tinged groove; the song is called "Tis The Season". It seemed that the sisters, Erica and Tina, are on course for a startlingly good seasonal CD. Things start to go slightly amiss in the second track, "Only One", a great song albeit very short, but there's a whacking great snare on it; trying to ignore it is like talking to someone who has tomato sauce on their face and being too embarrassed to point it out. By the third song the cynics' camp is within earshot, I can hear them calling to me, "step inside and sup with us". The duo sing "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas", ahhhhgg! How many times has that song been covered? Couldn't we just have Judy Garland's 1944 version and leave it at that? I have no desire to become a derisive carper, I need some help here but none is forthcoming. Mary Mary's "O Come All Ye Faithful" has an African feel with chants and talking drums, it sounds manufactured and thin to me. "California Christmas" has potential but is let down by the cringy lyrics, "Christmas the Cali way." Ouch! Now you'd expect the gifted Campbell family, (Warryn, Erica's husband did the production) to get a Christmas gospel song sounding right-on, but "Call Him Jesus" doesn't sound right-on to me, the playing is sloppy. The girls still manage to soar and pierce the air with their amazing vocal prowess, but hearing them singing 'ding dong ding dong ding dong ding dong' kind of takes the edge off it somehow. The 11th track which is a remix of "California Christmas" has the obligatory rap on it. I think I've just managed to stay outside the scoffers' camp, it would have been welcome to see Mary Mary not giving ammunition to the sneerers. I may be wrong in saying that some artists do a Christmas CD because it's expected, and it's easy to think that Christmas songs are easy to do, subsequently the care that went into Mary Mary's previous recordings is patently missing here.

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