"Snowfall" gently falls on my ears as the first song of this Manhattan Transfer seasonal disc tremelos through my speakers, washing me carefully, quietly, steadily into a blissful state of bloody, suicidal tendencies, though within the first 10 seconds I feel only the numbness that comes more quickly than it would with suicide - as if my wrists are already slashed and the blood is oozing out and trickling along the tiles of the bathroom as slow and as careful and as gentle as this first song.

After this first tune I found myself wishing for John Cage's "4'33"" - a musical composition on the piano where he holds his fingers above the keys and never touches them. In other words — sweet, sweet silence. Eternal if at all possible.

19 hours later and we're on song two - and we have a funeral of a Christmas theme going on even before Christ is born - with "Let it Snow. Let it Snow. Let it Snow."

Kill Me Now. Kill Me now. Kill Me Now.

As the songs continue to play, it isn't visions of sugar plums dancing in my head, but Matrix-moving bullets headed toward each other, toward my ears.

I make a call, a desperate plea, to the one person who may save me from myself - other than hitting the STOP button, of course.

"Mom? What do you like about Manhattan Transfer?"*

"I like their harmonies and their arrangements of familiar tunes. They do have a way with a tune, and with their delivery. The timing and musicianship is good. Too slow for the faster younger set?? Too bad. Great for the "boomers" :-) I play their music over and over. Do they have a new Christmas CD?"

Thanks Mom, you're a peach.

And, well, no this a re-mastered version of 1992's The Christmas Album. Which leads me to wonder if in the process they accidentally left off an instrumental dub or fuzzed the vocals to dampen them down. Or the sound engineer keeled over as he was mixing, his head and bald spot pressed against and fixing a switch in the "off" position.

I'm pretty sure The Ramones had this group in mind when they penned "I Wanna Be Sedated" but left off " ... by Manhattan Transfer" due to rhythm and copyright concerns.

At the end of "Santa Claus is Coming To Town," - think the exact antithesis of Bruce Springsteen's version - there's an impromptu cackle from one of the singers and a laugh followed by a murmered, "I love it" - as if it's Janis Joplin after a full-throated performance of "Ball and Chain." As if they'd achieved something other than a Muzak-lite version of a Christmas standard.

The last song, "Goodnight" comes and I'm excited enough now to feel myself considering an attempt at thinking about trying to ponder waking up from my self-induced stupor and make another call, to a friend I know. I need an energy transfusion - and I know she rocks to ... John Tesh.

(* The aforementioned mom also likes Janis Joplin, Scott Joplin, Beethoven, Bon Jovi and Guns and Roses, among many others.")