“Fire burnin’ bright / Love in the air tonight” begins Linda Imperial in the opening verses of her new single “Christmas You and Me.” Her words contextualize the mood created by the music quite wonderfully, but it isn’t until we start to feel the light nudge of the percussion in the chorus that the real thrust of the narrative starts to take shape. Imperial  doesn’t seem to do anything halfway in her career, and in this track she’s proving to be as invested in purity as a songwriter as she’s ever been in the last quarter century of her career.

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As much as I like the lyrics on their own, it’s Imperial’s voice that makes them sound so inviting from start to finish. The structure of the verses, especially outside of the chorus, puts a big challenge before her, and although she doesn’t show us any hesitation in her attack, she isn’t rushing into the climax here at all. Patience is everything in this style of music, and luckily for us this singer/songwriter knows how to utilize to her favor like few others in her circles still do.

There’s nothing pendulous or seemingly withheld by the tempo, but the style of the beat here still yields a tension impossible for any pop lover to bear longer than it lasts in this track. When the fever pitch is finally met in the chorus, there’s such a release from Imperial that it’s difficult to tell where her end of the melody is concluding and that of the instrumentation is just starting up. Seamlessness isn’t something frequently associated with the indie market, but for her, accepting anything but the perfectly adjusted and arranged product we find in a songlike “Christmas You and Me” simply isn’t in her blood.

The guitar parts in this song could have used just a little more volume than they were afforded, but I can also understand why Imperial would want to highlight the piano element here in the fashion she did. There’s a cosmopolitan feel to the keys that we just don’t get from the electric strings, and by giving this feeling just a touch more of the spotlight while retaining the subtle presence of its guitar-driven counterpart, we actually get something that feels a bit more representative of the multilayered artistry this musician has become known for in the past 20 years.

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Christmastime is here at last, and if there’s one thing that Linda Imperial is making sure of this season it’s that our holidays remain otherwise untouched by the drama of a 2020 that seems to never end. “Christmas You and Me” is as much a statement about who Imperial is as a singer/songwriter as it is an attempt to join the immortal ranks of other artists to have taken on the task of making incredible, original Christmas music, and these days that isn’t something you can expect to find very often. She’s a one of a kind performer, and her skills make this an irresistible document for sure.

John McCall