Katie Melua’s seventh album is marked by a departure and a homecoming. Faced with her first project away from mentor and easy listening Midas Mike Batt, the Georgian-born singer returned to her motherland to enlist the Gori Women’s Choir for a record inspired by the reflective melancholia of the festive period. Whether that choral accompaniment is enlivening classics (“O Holy Night”) or tackling consumerism (“A Time To Buy”), Melua always finds human warmth amid the Siberian chill.