Kacey Musgraves - A Very Kacey Christmas (10th Anniversary) [Picture Disc]

Kacey Musgraves brings back A Very Kacey Christmas as a limited anniversary picture disc, an apt format for her most playful record.

Released in 2016, a year after Pageant Material, it was her first holiday album, produced by Musgraves with Misa Arriaga and Kyle Ryan. She pitched it as a whimsical throwback, and that is exactly how it plays: eight seasonal standards and four originals, dressed in retro country, Western swing and a little tiki-bar warmth rather than sleigh bells by the truckload.

The originals are the real treats. A Willie Nice Christmas brings in Willie Nelson, and his guitar Trigger, for a sly, smoky duet, while Present Without a Bow pairs her with Leon Bridges on a slow, aching soul ballad about missing someone at Christmas. Christmas Makes Me Cry, co-written with Shane McAnally and Brandy Clark, is the quiet heart of the record, all wry honesty and tears behind the tinsel. The Quebe Sisters add close fiddle-band harmonies to Mele Kalikimaka, a breezy detour to the islands.

A decade on, it sits comfortably beside the vintage holiday records it borrows from, warm and funny in equal measure. The picture disc suits December spins, and it looks good left out on display between plays.