MUMBAI: During the first lockdown Michelle David & The Gospel Sessions kept us morally going with their Sunday Service concert series in Paradiso Amsterdam. A program that uplifted musical spirits and catered to the well-being of your mind, body and soul.

Now, during the second lockdown they will once again try to bring a joyous and warm atmosphere with their sparkling Christmas album. ‘It's A Soulful Christmas’ - out on December 4 - besides comfort, offers lots of fun for the holidays. This happens with soul, gospel and pop in various shades. A bridge is being built between the Christian Christmas with the birth of Jesus and the American interpretation of it with Santa Claus and gifts under the tree. Christmas is a celebration of being together, which is reflected in the single This Christmas (I'll Be By Your Side).

After ‘The Gospel Sessions Vol.4’, ‘It's A Soulful Christmas’ will be Michelle David & The Gospel Sessions's second album this year. “The idea for the album had been around for some time,” Onno Smit (founder / guitar) recalls. "But then we actually got quite busy this year with the Sunday Service series in Paradiso and other concerts that we still could do, and we ended up writing and recording the album in less than five weeks.”

Singer Michelle David has already said she hopes it will be a future "Christmas classic"; She has even used the words "a soul treasure". And certainly not inaccurately. This record has absolutely everything to make it a Christmas classic, one that you like to put on the shelf next to Phil Spector's ultimate Christmas album from the sixties. “That was also the intention. If we were going to do it, then we had to do it really well”, explains great Christmas fan Smit, who checked the guidelines for a really good Christmas album in the British newspaper The Guardian. “I love it myself. I knew about the bubbles and the glockenspiel that had to come on it. But the article also stated what was absolutely not allowed. That was just as interesting.”

When asked, he gives an example of what was definitely forbidden: “Cynicism! That is only possible if you make a parody of a Christmas record. But when you make a record for the mainstream it must, above all, create a certain atmosphere, one of warmth, conviviality and togetherness. In addition to that atmosphere, the emphasis is on the voice that tells the story. ”

Leave that to Michelle. Think of how - on the album Vol. 4, on the jubilant track Victory - she sang about her glorious victory over cancer.

"If you play the record at home while sitting at the table, it should radiate warmth and the Christmas feeling." Fortunately, you can all hear the classic bells, the glockenspiel and the celeste (or celesta). No hoof trotting, however. “But the wind does blow during Silent Night,” Smit argues.

According to Smit you can make two kinds of Christmas albums: with cover songs, or with your own songs; in both cases alternated with a traditional Christmas song here and there. They have chosen the second. “The danger with covers is that you never make it better. Last Christmas from Wham! for example is just finished. You have to stay away from that. That's why we started writing songs ourselves. ”

Exceptions to that premise are What Christmas Means To Me by Stevie Wonder from 1967 and the regular Silent Night. The latter track includes music from Be Still (a song by Michelle David & The Gospel Sessions), making it a mashup. Their eight own songs feature a tasteful musical variation of mid-fifties gospel (God Will and Mary), pop (A Christmas Cliché Thing, Do the Christmas Mambo!) And early sixties soul (the title track and Snow).

This Christmas (I'll be by your side) is a Christmas classic in the making. The lyrics of the single is about someone who does everything he can to spend Christmas with his family. Which will be quite difficult this year as we know by now. But that connection is what Michelle David & The Gospel Sessions have been bringing all year round. Music connects and certainly this heartfelt yet catchy Christmas music.

Another connection is the bridge that is built between the two Christmas worlds: the old traditional feast of the birth of Jesus Christ and the American feast with Santa Claus and a Christmas tree with presents. Add to this snow, mountains of snow, to at least knee height of an adult man. The magnificent artwork of the album designed by Emanuel Wiemans also fits in that atmosphere. We see the band photographed in a drawn living room. A beautiful atmospheric visual find.

Everything contributes to a Christmas experience for the true enthusiast who can get completely carried away by the atmosphere. Or as Michelle puts it: "It's a record that takes you through Christmas time and beyond with a lot of soul."

You cannot share the link to the album with third parties or publish it It's a Soulful Christmas out December 4!