Anyone familiar with the Crash Test Dummies" 1993 hit "Mmm Mmm Mmm" is apt to agree that, over the course of an entire CD, singer Brad Roberts"s froglike baritone is probably an acquired taste. It may also be hard to imagine a Christmas album delivered by that voice, even if a 1991 alternative rock compilation did feature the Dummies performing a version of "The First Noel" (rerecorded here) that still gets plenty of airplay every December. Fortunately, Roberts isn"t the band"s only vocalist; the soulful, mournful Ellen Reid takes the lead on five tracks, including the gorgeous "In the Bleak Midwinter." Roberts is pretty much the voice on the others, though--and if you can imagine Leonard Cohen crooning "White Christmas" over a skating rink organ, Tom Waits recording "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen," and a "Jingle Bells" straight out of a German expressionist film, then you have some idea of what"s here. This is an acquired taste, perhaps, but it"s certainly one of the better idiosyncratic holiday releases of recent times. --Bill Holdship