Winter Carols

This is the third time around for the seasonal album from the "Renaissance rock" side project of Deep Purple guitarist Ritchie Blackmore and his wife, singer Candice Night.

Their 2006 work has been remastered and fleshed out with three additional carols, with a second album including the same live renditions of five songs and several mixes of their original song Christmas Eve from the 2013 expanded reissue.

Tasteful, mostly acoustic arrangements straight out of a Renaissance Pleasure Faire are often grandiose in scale, cranking up to 11 only on their electrified version of Swedish rock band Rednex's Wish You Were Here.

Be humble

Husband-wife duo Daniel and Laura Goans have crafted Songs for Christmas Time, one of the most inventive and fittingly humble holiday collections this season. The band, Lowland Hum, reimagined such warhorses as Joy to the World and O Come, O Come Emmanuel to give them unexpected freshness and supplement them with less-frequently covered tunes including the African-American spiritual Ain't That Rockin' All Night and Johnny Cash's We Are the Shepherds. This is a smart blend of low-tech and high imagination.