TARJA “From Spirits And Ghosts (Score For A Dark Christmas)” /GLP/

The sixth full-length studio album by legendary Finnish Gothic Orchestral/Symphonic soprano singer.
It’s also the second classical and Christmas album of Tarja.
While Tarja Turunen is well known for wedding the Operatic to Symphonic Metal, she forgoes the latter entirely on "From Spirits And Ghosts (Score For A Dark Christmas)". Right in time for the holiday season, Tarja delivers the soundtrack to a darker Christmas – an exploration of the other side of Christmas - the Christmas of the lonely people and the missing ones.
Recorded during the summer of 2017 in the Caribbean, mixed in Texas, and mastered in New York, the set includes 11 classic carols and other songs associated with the season as well as a new track recorded in the same manner. Turunen produced the collection with the American, Emmy Award-winning film score composer Jim Dooley (who also handled arrangements), and British producer Tim Palmer (Pearl Jam, David Bowie, U2, the Cure, etc).
Though Turunen's voice is characteristically crystalline, the Gothic orchestral treatments of the traditional holiday material, beginning with downright spooky album-opener "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel", are sometimes akin to the gloomy and monumental atmospheres created by Dead Can Dance. This feel saturates other tunes here such as the heartbreakingly lovely "Pie Jesu", the wildly dramatic "O Tannenbaum", and amazingly enough, the album's greatest surprise "Feliz Navidad". The melancholy in the relatively sparse charts on "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" creates an even greater sense of intimacy, while closer "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" is drenched in echo and electronics aside a celeste and chamber instruments, creating an eerie feel to send the album off. "Together," the lone new track, is a bittersweet seasonal song with Turunen fronting a full chorus, as triangles, swelling strings, and tympanies fill up the space behind and around her – it's as lovely as it is sad. The outlier is the hymn "Amazing Grace", stitched together with pulsing synths, low-end brass, and reverb before the entire orchestra floods the foreground.
Somehow, Turunen's aesthetic principles shoehorns the tune to fit seamlessly into the mix. Given the absence of Metal on "Spirits And Ghosts", it was interesting to see how it sits with her legions of fans. At all, the album has been warmly acclaimed by critics and fans alike, who have noted the dark twist Turunen achieved on the album and the combination of different languages.
With the album release, comes also Tarja Turunen's first graphic novel, "From Spirits And Ghosts (Novel For A Dark Christmas)". The 40-page novel is about the world of dark Christmas, scripted by Peter Rogers with accompanying art by Conor Boyle. The "novel for a dark Christmas" revolves around Tarja's two characters, the dark and light one, bringing together lonely souls during the festive season.
180 g Black vinyl in gatefold cover.
Edel Germany GmbH/Ear Music, 2017 (0212245EMU). Made in Germany. First press.


Tracklist:

Side A
1. O Come, O Come, Emmanuel (Traditional song) 4:56
2. Together 3:21
3. We Three Kings (John Henry Hopkins Jr. cover) 3:54
4. Deck The Halls (Traditional song) 2:44
5. Pie Jesu (Traditional song) 3:28
6. Amazing Grace (Traditional song - John Newton cover) 4:42

Side B
7. O Tannenbaum (Traditional song - Melchior Franck cover) 3:37
8. Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas (Hugh Martin & Ralph Blane cover) 3:40
9. God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen (Traditional song) 4:13
10. Feliz Navidad (José Feliciano cover) 5:48
11. What Child Is This (William Chatterton Dix cover) 4:55
12. We Wish You A Merry Christmas (Traditional song) 4:07

Total playing time: 49:25 min.