What We Loved, What We Missed, and Christmas Cheer

December is a great time for reflection, as another year closes up shop. In the music world, we like to look back so we can talk about what we loved and discover great music we might have missed (like Jon Stickley Trio’s newest). It’s also an opportunity to consider the incredible careers of artists who released sizable collections and retrospectives. To satisfy the latter, we’ve got big things from Roy Orbison and King Curtis this week. Of course, there’s also no better time for Christmas caroling, and Rhonda Vincent has us covered there. (While you’re thinking about all this new music, in case you haven’t yet voted for your favorite albums of 2015, you can take care of that here too.)