MUSIC: “Joy” To The World, Tracey Thorn Has Come

If you’re prone to the same kind of holiday melancholy that songs like “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” and Joni Mitchell’s “River” inspire—both of which Tracey Thorn covers on her new holiday disc, Tinsel and Lights—you’re gonna love “Joy.” One of two original songs on the Everything But The Girl singer’s collection of holiday covers and standards, the track is a “secular carol,” as Thorn herself put it on NPR recently, that shows just why all the tinsel and lights are so reassuring at the darkest, coldest time of the year. “You loved it as a kid / And now you need it more than you ever did.” It’s a better “reason for the season” than we’ve heard in an awful long time!