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Our Review

This late in the season I become much more difficult to impress. I have had a dozen torches handed me by Jeannette and Isabella, been bedeviled by bevies of singing angels, and sat silently through countless silent nights. So, if I am going to listen to yet more Christmas music, I want to be soothed and succored, not clubbed to death.

Fortunately for me then that the last review of 2007 is Russell Shead's Strings of Christmas, a rather laid-back and unostentatious new age guitar offering. Its eleven songs, while made up mostly of public domain carols, were leavened with Shead's gentle flamenco-styled motifs. This gave the entire affair a flavor that I felt entirely at home with.

While I tend to listen with headphones while pecking and picking at reviews and HTML, Shead's Christmas arrangements are the sort of thing that go best in the CD changer (or on a "mix" playlist, for them that have discovered the joy of mp3) with other instrumental offerings. His meticulous style is played to best effect on such melodic gems as Jesu, Joy Of Man's Desiring and O Come All Ye Faithful, where his deliberate and deliberative finger-style play is worked to best advantage for the listener and every note is enjoyed with suspenseful anticipation.

Russell Shead's Strings of Christmas is a welcome addition to anyone's new age holiday collection for those long contemplative evenings in mid-December.

--Richard Banks
(Reviewed in 2007)

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From the liner notes:

Produced by Russell Shead
Recorded at Sounds Great Productions, Fort Worth, Texas
Engineered by Aaron Meador and Darren Brown
Mixed and Mastered by Darren Brown

Russell Shead

Strings of Christmas

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Track List