“All I can do is be me, whoever that is.” – Bob Dylan

It’s very, very late in the day to make a fuss about Bob Dylan’s voice, though whole flocks of second-rate comedians and online jokesters are still making damp hay about it. At this point, nearly a half-century into the man’s singing career, pointing at that Dylan’s pipes lack the range of Judy Garland and the sweetness of The Beach Boys is not exactly going to set the collective jaws a’dropping. Notions of “authenticity” in pop music are often only reductive, snobbish constructs, but there is a kind of music lover who, in part thanks to the work of Mr Dylan, both as a singer and as a lifelong proponent of oldey timey music, prefers a throat full of frog than a velvet fog.

But still: even full acceptance of Dylan’s characteristic croak and whine can be strained. Personally, I could never take the sneezy nasality of “Lay Lady Lay.” I’d rather he shouted the thing in my ear in a fake German accent than whistle it, as he did, through one nostril. Thankfully, he rarely went there again.

Lately, he has been settling into a kind of growl/grumble that suits perfectly the jumped-up country blues he’s been sitting on for the past few records. The early reediness had given way to something closer to Joe Cocker or Tom Waits. If you occasionally feel like sucking on a Lozenge a few tunes in, that’s a small price to pay.

And then along comes Christmas in the Heart, Dylan’s new, 100% un-ironic collection of yuletide tunes, and all of a sudden, the man’s voice has become a question again.

The biggest shock of the record is how unshocking it all is. The first tune, “Here Comes Santa Claus,” actually begins with sleigh bells, for God’s sake. Dylan’s band and omnipresent back-up singers are the essence of sweetness and light. Aside from a Tex-Mex’d version of “Must Be Santa,” nothing is overplayed here. Dylan starts off playing it straight, too: for the first part of “Here Comes…” he sounds right at home, crooning right along with the band. It’s going to be a wonderful holiday…

But then comes the line “pulling on the reins,” which comes out as “pulling on the reigghhhgghghhns!” After that we get, “hang your stockings, say your prayers,” which, intentionally or not, is delivered with such an ominous growl you start to wonder what this Santa person has in store for the kiddies. Same thing with “jump in bed, cover your head, cuz Santa Clause comes tonight.” Run!

From then on, it’s a see-saw between straight-up carolling (with the backup singers jumping in to hang aural garlands whenever needed) and Bob trying to stuff the turkey with pleghm. The best part is that the old nasality creeps in here for a syllable or two, as if Dylan invited not only the studio singers, but his younger self, too. Thus “Hark the Herald Angel Sing” becomes “Hawk! the Heeeeeee-rald Angels Sigggghhhhhnggg!”

The craziest thing about it all is that it works. Compared to Neil Diamond’s cornier-than-a-cornfield new Christmas album, for example, or the many dozens of “pass the eggnog and write the cheque” collections of X-mas standards thrown together by over-the-hill rockers or the emotionally null versions by dead-eyed jazz singers like Diana Krall, Dylan’s home-and-hearth is full of life, and nestled in a snowy little hamlet where no one has heard of AutoTune. The whole thing sounds like what it most likely is, a bit of sentiment from an old man who gets tired of archness and just wants to sing some pretty old songs. Maybe it isn’t: maybe this is Dylan’s most cynical move ever (more than that Victoria’s Secret ad, even), but that’s a hard thought to sustain against the sound of the man belting out a smoker’s cough version of “O’ Come All Ye Faithful (Adestes Fideles),” and with a verse in Latin, too.

Christmas in the Heart may be hipster-parent-friendly, but don’t hold that against it. (And that hipster friendliness is deceptive — Dylan foregrounds a lot of the tunes’ religious sentiments, even ending the final song with an extended “Ahh-mennnn…,” which may turn off the Starbucks-and-stroller set.)

For myself, I normally can’t stand to hear this stuff until maybe a week before the day itself, but this time, it’s barely November, and I’ve already hooked just about everyone around me on Dylan’s yuletide croaking.