http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005G4GKXG/?tag=imwan-20

01. The Christmas Song (3:16)
02. I’ll Be Home For Christmas (3:05)
03. White Christmas (2:23)
04. Silent Night (3:00)
05. It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year (2:20)
06. What Child Is This? (3:20)
07. Winter Wonderland (2:15)
08. Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas (2:35)
09. Happy Christmas And Many More (3:16)
10. O Holy Night (4:11)

The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year is a new collection of Christmas standards performed by Scott Weiland, front man for Stone Temple Pilots. In the spirit of the greatest holiday crooners, The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year covers a variety of styles including big band swing, orchestrated ballads, reggae, bossa nova and more, all delivered with surprising ease by Scott Weiland.

Rather than resurrect last year's thread, I figured I'd start a clean one. Scott Weiland, of course, is the front man for Grunge favorites Stone Temple Pilots. But, for Christmas, he plays it pretty traditional crooner style as he demonstrated on his 2009 single "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas". And fans may recall that the Stone Temple Pilots also provided a fairly traditional reading of "Christmas Time Is Here" for a KROQ Almost Christmas concert some years back.

Right now, Rhino records is offering a pre-order price of $11.99 for this one, though you may want to factor in shipping costs to get a fair comparison with the Amazon pre-order price.

I guess delaying this a year wasn't enough. Release for Weiland's holiday opus has been pushed back again--from October 4 to October 25.

Scott, this isn't helping anyone take you seriously. Seriously.

It begins. Got a promo copy today at 'Rama--my first new Christmas purchase of the season!

Due next week, but it's streaming now if you want to listen...

http://www.spin.com/articles/first-spin ... m-be-merry

Ken

Wow...thanks for the chance to preview this. As much as Dylan's Christmas album was a pass because it all sounded like "Carol of the Phlegm Wad", Weiland's album is similarly bad in a different way. I'm sure that he means to be sincere, but what I've heard so far sounds like he's half in the bag when he's singing. I just wish he'd find a note and stick with it sometimes. He's all over the place vocally to the point where I'm just having a really hard time trying to enjoy this. Maybe if I can find it cheap...REALLY CHEAP...I'll consider it. Otherwise, I'm just not impressed and he really doesn't offer anything new.

I'm not sure I've heard a cha-cha-cha version of "Silent Night" before...

Ken

The title track sounds ok. Everything else sounds like a drunken cross between Bing Crosby and Kermit the Frog. Yikes.

My wife would throw me out of the house if I put this on during the Christmas season.

Wasn't there a loungey bonus track at the end of one of the STP albums? Tiny Music, I think? I'm imagining that this would be like that.

It's not that Weiland took the crooner approach. It's that he was either completely wasted or his voice is completely gone. Either way, this is about the worst Christmas record I've ever heard. Though I imagine it will be a popular goof favorite 20 years from now. William Hung put out a better Christmas record.

It's not that bad. The problem is, there's no real audience for it. His voice isn't strong enough to coax unfamiliar listeners and it's so antithetical to everything else he's done that Weiland fans won't find much value in it. But while there are some pretty awful moments, there are some decent tracks as well. It's not a masterpiece by any stretch but the samples were misleadingly bad.

That hidden track was on Purple and wasn't recorded by STP...it was from some street performer IIRC.

It's not that bad? Actually, I think I was far too kind.