Quick Reviews: Juliana Hatfield, Eric Clapton, and Christmas Albums of 2025.
A great new album from Hatfield, a deluxe version of Journeyman, holiday records by Old Crow Medicine Show, Bryan Adams, Brad Paisley, and the Pretty Reckless. Plus, Brantley Gilbert's Greatest Hits
Before we go any further, a couple of quick housekeeping notes:
This will be the last Quick Review/Quick Takes/Etc of 2025. The record release schedule comes to an absolute halt at this point of the year, plus the impending holiday break means time will be tight. These posts will be back in the new year, roughly around January 9, when the business cranks back into gear. I hope there will be a newsletter or two regarding other topics in the meantime, though.
Secondly, this particular newsletter contains a heavy dose of holiday records—not all the new-to-2025 Christmas albums, just the ones that made an impression. One of the things I always liked about my old job at Allmusic (please subscribe to this newsletter if you like the work I did there! And a big, big thank you to all of you that are paying subscribers, it’s appreciated more than you know) was keeping up with the seasonal releases, since they were unpredictable: there’s no way to guess who has a good Christmas album in them. This year, I was shocked by how much I enjoyed the Bryan Adams holiday jam. It goes to show you never can tell…
Juliana Hatfield—Lightning Might Strike [2025]
★★★★
Juliana Hatfield made Lightning Might Strike in the crosswinds of personal loss. Not long after leaving her home of twenty years for a house in a small town, she experienced three successive blows: her dog died, her close friend died, and her mother was diagnosed with cancer. All the change sent Hatfield into a depression, during which time she wrote the songs on Lightning Might Strike, trying to find her way out of the darkness. Unlike so many albums where singer/songwriters contemplate impending mortality, this doesn’t feel gloomy and contemplative. Hatfield opts to channel her grief into concise, hooky pop tunes, the brightness of the music almost seeming aspirational; she’s willing herself to find a better place. She’s so successful in creating colorful, immediate pop music that it might take a second listen to recognize the trauma roiling underneath the album’s surface. There are moments where the grief is so powerful—notably “Ashes,” a tribute to her late friend, wears its sadness plainly—she can’t quite perform this trick, which only adds to the emotional impact of Hatfield choosing to end Lightning Might Strike with “All I’ve Got,” a song where she finds the will to go on through making music. The album itself stands as a testament to the restorative nature of art, both for the artist and the audience.
Old Crow Medicine Show—OCMS XMAS [2025]
★★★★
OCMS XMAS delivers precisely what the title promises: it’s unmistakably an Old Crow Medicine Show album, filled with string band rave-ups, vaudeville shuffles, blues, plaintive ballads, and good-time blues.
