John Fahey – Christmas Guitar Volume One Varrick VR-002 (1982)
John Fahey turned christmas albums into a sort of a fall-back position. Every few years or so he turned out a new one. Christmas Guitar Volume One features a number of new recordings of holiday songs he had previously recorded. The new recordings tended to use more or less the same arrangements as before. What had changed though was Fahey’s style. His playing was more deliberate, even austere. From a cynical point of view, his playing seemed to focus on a kind of clinical precision for lack of any new ideas about how to present the music. Still, even if it can fairly be said Fahey has done better with christmas music, this album is better than your run-of-the-mill holiday claptrap.