These discs feature music that’s sweet, soulful, bawdy and beachy.

By and large, it was a pretty good crop of holiday discs this year. Below are the most coherent thoughts I could piece together about the 16 new releases of holiday stuff I got in my stocking this year, after a couple of marathon music benders that left me looking like Cindy Lou Who but feeling more like The Grinch.

I left a few things out not because of quality but because they fell outside the criteria: Brian Setzer’s compilation from his previous holiday discs was excellent, but there’s nothing new on it; ditto The New Kids on the Block’s Merry, Merry Christmas rerelease. The St. Luke’s Church Contemporary Choir’s Abide in Our Hearts disc is also excellent, but not explicitly holiday-related; look for a separate bit on that soon, as well as the rereleases of the Johnny Cash Christmas specials of 1978 and 1979.

Hey! Ho! Let’s go!

Aretha Franklin

This Christmas Aretha

(DMI Records)

The first-ever holiday offering from the Queen of Soul (really? Yup; that’s what it says) finds Franklin in mature voice — she doesn’t have as much shouting power as she did even a few years ago, and her son steals her high-note thunder on “This Christmas,” but she has plenty of nuance and inflection, and her delicate renditions of such classic material as “Silent Night” and “Ave Maria” may be even more winning than the soul material.

But there’s still lots to like here, especially on the three tracks Franklin produced herself, which have a warm, organic soulful feeling that might not exactly replicate the old Muscle Shoals or Atlantic Records guys she cut her iconic stuff with, but are at least in the same spirit. Even the other seven tracks (produced by Tena Clark) sound more like old-school soul than the gooey, artificial confection that I know you’re afraid this would sound like.

And stick around for Franklin’s bawdy adaptation of “ ’Twas the Night Before Christmas,” which closes out the record. From “My stockings were hung by the chimney with care/ In hopes that my new man soon would be there” and goes up (or down) hill from there.

Harry Connick Jr.

What a Night! A Christmas Album

(Columbia)

With Harry Connick Jr., there’s always a battle between the hard-hitting piano player who began with solo performances and was influenced by Cow Cow Davenport, and the crooner who unfortunately seems to have read the press clippings that call him the new Sinatra. And that dichotomy is in full force on this holiday offering.

The first half or so is pretty unchallenging stuff, as Connick sings with his big band and turns out unthreatening arrangements of pretty tame stuff: “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” “Have a Holly Jolly Christmas,” you know the drill. There are some nice arrangement tricks — some snappy horns on “Holly Jolly Christmas,” a walking bass-piano unison and a dizzying string interlude in “O Come All Ye Faithful” — and a couple of originals, but nothing that breaks any real new ground.

Things change during a lurching, swinging “Dance of the Sugarplum Fairies.” And the old-school Connick comes out to play for the rest of the record.

There’s bawdy swing with brassy horns on “Santarrific,” with vocal cameos and hijinkery from trombonist and sidekick Lucien Barbarin, and extended piano and bass solos on “Jingle Bells.”

It goes on from there, reaching full flower in a spectacular “We Three Kings” that begins with a barrelhouse piano intro and segues into a New Orleans-funk workout with the big band. And it ends on a soft-spoken, dignified note, on the stripped-down, gospel-influenced original “Song for the Hopeful,” with guest vocals by Kim Burrell.

So stick around for this one — at first, it’s as bland as you feared, but in the end it’s as strong as you hoped.

Sarah Brightman

A Winter Symphony

(EMI)

Brightman’s precious voice makes Kate Bush sound like Tina Turner, and on this disc she’s so dressed up with sleigh bells, choirs and heavy synths that she almost disappears. She makes a few inspired song choices — the opening “Arrival,” with all the pomp-pop exuberance characteristic of the writers, Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus from ABBA; Roy Wood’s “I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday,” with its ’70s-rock swagger; Neil Diamond’s simple and spiritual “I’ve Been This Way Before” — but there are so many bells and whistles that the whole thing collapses under its own weight in the more obvious choices. For fans only.

Mama Doni

I Love Chanukah!

(Mama Doni Productions)

This four-song disc looks like one of those intolerable, cheaply made children’s-performer discs with awful production values (straight-out-of-the-box drum machines, worse-than-’80s keyboards, etc.) and terminally cute material that no child with language skills would allow to be played in his or her presence. Well, it’s pretty darned cutesy — its target audience is likely a good few years younger than Doni thinks it is — but it’s listenable to adult ears, with a full band running through “Latke Man,” a reasonable echo-drenched rockabilly takeoff with tongue-twisting lyrics, the strongest track here.

Things come close to the rails during the rest (“Funky fresh”? Ecch), and the closing title track is a pronunciation exercise and not much else, but it’s gentle religious-traditional instruction that’s good-hearted, good-humored (“La Vida Dreidel” is thankfully not a “La Vida Loca” rewrite and blends a few styles nicely) and has a beat. Worth checking out for younger kids.

Various Artists

All Wrapped Up!

(Hollywood Records)

This is a seven-song, teen- and tween-friendly compilation of artists headlined by The Jonas Brothers and Miley Cyrus, both of whom are not well represented: the former with “Joyful Kings” (a mash-up of “Joy to the World” and “We Three Kings of Orient Are”) and the latter with “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town.” Both are sung in labored style — straight-up singing isn’t the strong point for either act — but worse, there’s no sense of ambition or fun in either of these tracks, which both these acts can muster on a good day (most of the time, in the case of the Brothers).

The highlight is Marie Digby’s simple, sweet rendition of “Bring Me Love,” but if you find that online you don’t have to sit through Demi Lovato squawking through Paul McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmas Time.” And you don’t wanna.

Roy Holliday

“Christmas Time on the Beach”

(Independent single)

This one-shot single from Rhode Islander Holliday combines an ’80s-reggae riddim with Holliday’s well-worn folk-rock voice and lyrics about the pleasures of sticking your feet into the sand instead of the snow. It’s the antidote to shopping, shoveling or just plain shivering. Wherever he’s sending this song from, I want to be there. Available through www.royholliday.com.

Rosie Thomas

A Very Rosie Christmas!

(Nettwerk)

The Seattle indie singer and songwriter’s regular material is kinda faux-naif for my taste, but this collection of covers and originals is a winner, full of inventive rearrangements, loaded with pianos and strings but with a lo-fi, ’70s AM radio-style sheen, all supporting Thomas’s cool-water voice and sweet-natured songwriting. The highlight is a radical, yet beautiful, major-key rearrangement of “O Come Emmanuel,” but the whole record is a must-listen.

Various Artists

This Warm December: A Brushfire Holiday Vol. 1

(Brushfire Records)

This is a low-key affair, headlined by contributions from Jack Johnson and G. Love, with what sound like mostly home recordings.

That’s not to say that some of the songs aren’t inspired; Neil Halstead’s “The Man in the Santa Suit” reminds us that that’s a nice bit of storytelling, and Zee Avi’s “No Christmas for Me” showcases a strong, jazz-influenced voice. Money Mark’s “Stuck at the Airport” and Rogue Wave’s cover of The Who’s “Christmas” both show a manic home-recording creativity, too, but much of the rest of it is acoustic guitar and voice only, and without a lot of guitar technique on display, it’s strum-and hum stuff. Which gets a little enervating when it’s laid end-to-end.

Ashton Allen

The Christmas Songs

(Rock Salt Songwriters)

The singer and songwriter takes on a few Christmas classics as well as six originals, and while the point seems to be to make Christmas music that sounds like what you’d hear on the radio and the Internet and the TV all the rest of the year, that’s also the problem. Nothing offensively cheesy here, but nothing really stands out either — middle-of-the-road, post-Jack Johnson, “indie”-rock here.

Neil Sedaka

The Miracle of Christmas

(Razor and Tie)

Well, good on Neil for taking it on himself to make his first-ever Christmas record a double-disc set, with the first disc being all originals. This being Neil Sedaka, though, the best moments are on the faux-gospel “Love is Spreading Over the World” and the dramatic “Where Is God?,” which takes on the big question inspired by suffering during the holiday season.

There are also a bunch of lonely-at-Christmas ballads, the best being the travelogue “A Lonely Christmas in New York,” and we really only needed about half of them, but you can see why he cranked them out — they still beat heck the out of uninspired piano-and-vocal-only retreads of, you know, “Winter Wonderland” and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” How do I know that? Because the second disc consists of uninspired piano-and-vocal-only retreads of, you know, “Winter Wonderland” and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” Sigh.

Various Artists

We Wish You a Metal Xmas and a Headbanging New Year

(Armoury)

There’s one of these every year, and it’s always good for a laugh, if not much more than that. This one wears thin after a while — I can’t imagine anyone but fans playing it, and even then only once. But it’s got a decent arena-metal all-star lineup, with the biggest names being Alice Cooper (“Santa Claws is Coming to Town”), Stephen Pearcy (“Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer”), Ronnie James Dio (“God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen”) and more.

But the highlight is “Run Rudolph Run,” by The Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl, ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons and Motorhead’s main man, the almost literally impossible Lemmy Kilmister, whose gravel-gargling vocals combine with Gibbons’ trademark guitar squeals for the one track that lives up to expectations. It’s a Christmas-mix keeper for years to come, and not just for metal fans.

Anuna

Christmas Memories

(Elevation)

The choral group Anuna has built up serious Irish-traditional cred over the years, and on this disc they pretty much throw it all away. Old-school takes on international stuff such as “Noel Nouvelet,” “Codail a Linbh” and “Gaudete” are nice moments, but sitting through frankly embarrassing sub-Lawrence Welk junk such as “Christmas Kisses,” “Ding Dong Merrily on High” and the title song is too high a price to pay.

Los Lonely Boys

Christmas Spirit

(Epic)

Now, this is how you do it. You take what you normally do; you take Christmas songs; you treat them like you wrote them yourselves. It sounds simple, and when you listen to this disc, lousy Christmas albums make less and less sense. The disc starts with two originals — “I’ve Longed for Christmas” is in the vein of the brothers Garza’s laconic made-for-VH1 pop style; “She’ll Be My Everything for Christmas” is an intriguing take on swamp pop. After that, it’s eight Christmas favorites, and while the Boys’ song selection is unadventurous, they light fire to “Run Rudolph Run” and a roadhouse-shuffle “Feliz Navidad” and soothe on an almost a cappella “Away In a Manger.”

The highlights are the two instrumentals, however, as they go through a variety of musical styles — rumba, meringue, blues-rock — on “Carol of the Bells” and end the disc with a hushed guitar-only rendition of “Silent Night.” Guitarist Henry Garza proves himself throughout to be a serious inheritor of the Stevie Ray Vaughan mantle, and the rhythm section of JoJo and Ringo Garza push and pull through the various styles with ease.

Is it really that hard?

Tony Bennett featuring the Count Basie Big Band

A Swingin’ Christmas

(RPM/Columbia)

Apparently Tony Bennett knows it’s not that hard either: Take world-class musicians and let them loose on the material. Snappy horn arrangements abound; the swing is the real thing and Tony Bennett remains one of the smoothest and most deceptively powerful American voices. Not much to say about this one other than it’s what you hope it sounds like. A winner.

Various Artists

The Essential Now That’s What I Call Christmas

(EMI)

This is a collection of many of the best-known holiday classics laid end-to-end. Not a lot of revelations on here; it’s more of a all-in-one-place-for-the-first-time kind of deal — The Beach Boys’ “Little Saint Nick,” Donny Hathaway’s “This Christmas,” Jose Feliciano’s “Feliz Navidad,” Elvis Presley’s “Blue Christmas,” Burl Ives’s “Have a Holly Jolly Christmas” — you get the idea. The two new songs are Colbie Caillat’s “Mistletoe” and Ledisi’s “This Christmas (Could Be the One),” and while they’re both worthy additions to the canon that you’ll probably be hearing more of in the coming years (Ledisi is unusually restrained here, to good effect), they’re more like welcome discoveries than a reason to buy the disc all by themselves.

Brian McKnight

I’ll Be Home for Christmas

(Razor & Tie)

The smooth soul singer does a credible job with some down-the-middle holiday stuff here, but the backings are faceless pop-soul and McKnight’s voice doesn’t have enough character or distinction to make this stand out from the pack. Duets with the likes of Vince Gill and Josh Groban don’t really help, although an a cappella “Bless This House” with Take 6 provides a unique capper to an otherwise forgettable record. For fans only.

And to all a good night! Who’s up for some Dimmu Borgir?

rmassimo@projo.com