Merry Christmas From the Trailer Park, Antsy McClain and the Trailer Park Troubadors (DPR)

With a title like that, how can anybody resist? This Tennessee-based ensemble has several albums of red-state novelties to its credit, and for 2007 they moved on to Christmas. Nashville journeymen have a history of collaborating with this bunch, possibly attracted by Antsy's songwriting skills. The leadoff batter for this batch, "Christmas at the Trailer Park," is good fun, a more in-your-face version of Robert Earl Keen's "Merry Christmas From the Family." "The King of Christmas" invokes Elvis without resorting to a bad EP impersonation, "She's Underneath the Mistletoe Again" invokes suspicions of a faithless girlfriend and "Mary Lou's Christmas List" is the saga of the singer's mom, who does her holiday shopping year-round with the help of the lay-away plan. (Mom's probably passed on by now, 'cause if natural causes didn't get her then Wal-Mart's ending its lay-away plan probably did.) Good novelties, but since this involves country music folks we get a big blast of bathos and excess sincerity on the traditional carol covers like "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day," "Auld Lang Syne Revisited" and "O Little Town of Bethlehem," not to mention the things-were-better-in-the-old-days message of "The Elves' Strike."