Christmas is constant, says Ben Folds. Allowing you to take stock of whats different, to understand who you are and all the ways youve grown and changed. That notion lies at the heart of Folds brilliantly titled new holiday collection, Sleigher. Built on an eclectic mix of originals and reimagined classics, the album examines thepassage of time through the lens of Christmas, reflecting on memory, loss, and longing as it explores the variety of ways the yuletide season marks the chapters of our lives. The songs are playful here, full of humor and cheer, but theyre also laced with an inescapable sense of melancholy, a looming darkness that always seems to hover around the periphery of those late December nights. Folds performances, meanwhile, flirt with the standards while stretching the boundaries of tradition, at times offering up flashes of Vince Guaraldi and Burt Bacharach while still remaining true to Folds singularly virtuosic brand of off-kilter indie pop. The result is not so much a Ben Folds Christmas record as it is a Ben Folds record set at Christmas, a meditation on the inexorable turning of the calendar and our ever changing selves as observed at the most wonderfuland challengingtime of the year.