Album Review: Pentatonix’s ‘That’s Christmas to Me’ is a capella done right

Album Review: Pentatonix, “That’s Christmas to Me”

A cappella singing has been around for years. The term comes from Italian, meaning “in the chapel.” The singing is done without accompaniment. The NBC show “The Sing-Off,” just beginning its sixth season, has reignited a strong interest in the genre.

These days, a cappella singing is very different from what it was back in my day. Back then, a long time after the earth had cooled and slightly after the Garden of Eden, unaccompanied singing was barbershop singing, another genre that is thriving despite the best efforts of radio and television. Grammy-winning group Pentatonix, hailing from Arlington, Texas, won the third season of “The Sing-Off.” They were also one of only four groups to release a platinum album in 2014.

Today’s a cappella singers provide their own instruments: their own voices. Members of the groups provide rhythm and drums using their voices, and others can even pull off wailing guitar solos. It’s truly amazing to see what today’s singers can do with their voices.

Pentatonix shows a cappella singing at its best. A quintet of four guys and one female, they have done some great work. Within a year of winning, they had released two albums: one regular album and one Christmas album. There was a time in the history of the recording industry that a Christmas album wasn’t considered a thing only to be done at the end of a career or a desperate attempt to kick-start a flagging career but rather something that all artists did. Barbara Streisand’s first Christmas album came very early in her career, as did Elvis’ and a host of other music mainstays’. And it makes financial sense. Bing Crosby has been dead since 1977, yet his Christmas albums are yearly bestsellers and pump money into his estate. But I digress, which is par for the course.

“That’s Christmas to Me” is Pentatonix’s second Christmas album, and it shows everything that is right with modern a cappella singing and a few of its weak points.

It starts off with “Hark the Herald Angels Sing,” beginning with a traditional approach and then morphing into almost a hip-hop version. Given that everyone wants to personalize, I guess that’s okay. Actually, it’s pretty typical these days. Everyone is doing the same things to personalize, and that gets boring. And that’s one of the weak points. Too often, they seem to try to impress with vocal gymnastics. But even more often, it’s actually the tight harmonies and keeping things on the subdued side that makes it more interesting.

The second piece, “White Winter Hymnal,” is one of my favorites, a syncopated winter round that shows everything Pentatonix can do without taking it over the top. “Winter Wonderland/Don’t Worry Be Happy,” are fairly mainstream, nothing really great or bad. The title track, “That’s What Christmas is to Me,” is an engaging modern Christmas nostalgia piece. You can actually dance to the Christmas waltz of “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year.”

But the powerhouse pieces, the ones that make this album worth owning, are “Mary Did You Know” and their take on “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.” “Mary Did You Know” starts quietly and builds to an intensity that almost overwhelms but leaves on the point of shaking as it poses its question. And to hear what they do with Tchaikovsky is amazing. It really showcases what people can do with the human voice. These two pieces alone are worth the price of the album.