By now you've heard that Bob Dylan has a Christmas album coming out in October. (You may not have accepted it, but you've heard about it.) Last night, one of Dylan's reps held a listening party in L.A. for a handful of music journalists, playing six tracks from the project, which His Bobness is said to still be putting the final touches on this week. Being both a Christmas music freak and a Dylanologist, I loved what I heard, though I expect that by sincerely taking on chestnuts like "The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire)," Dylan may have made his most controversial album since the born-again years.

First, let me tell you what the album is not. There's no original material; every song is a familiar or semi-famiiliar holiday standard. In other words, don't expect to hear any original Dylan tunes along the lines of "Blowin' in the Blizzard," "Positively 34^th Street," "Don't Check Your List Twice, It's All Right," "I Want Yule," or "Ballad of a Jolly Fat Man." I'm also disappointed that Dylan didn't come up with a more characteristic and less generic album title—like, say, Blitzer on Blitzer, Eggnog on the Tracks, The Freestyle-Skiin' Bob Dylan, Santa Claus Lane Revisited, The Toyshop Tapes, Slow Horsedrawn Sleigh Coming, Under the Blood Red Mistletoe, or Elf Portrait.

No, it's simply called Christmas in the Heart, and Santa drops it off in stores Oct. 13 (though it will be available as a download to Citibank customers one week earlier, which is the source of its own minor controversy among some fans). The cover art of a pre-modern sleigh, very much in the old-school tradition of Currier and Ives, is a tipoff that the project is both sincerely and nostalgically intended, with no serious attempts at Christmas revisionism—even though, by its very nature, that voice being applied to those songs is going to involve some hefty revision.

I was most delighted by Dylan's take on the rarely covered "Must Be Santa"—a polka, and probably the fastest-paced thing Bob has recorded in his 48-year career. The exact style of it was surely influenced by a recording of the song made in the early 1990s by Texas group Brave Combo; as hardcore fans have noted, Dylan played that cover on a Christmas edition of his XM/Sirius satellite radio program. We're told that Dylan just shot a video for the tune, at a decaying mansion in L.A.'s historic West Adams district, with about 40 extras helping recreate the festive spirit heard on the actual track, which includes the sound of actual ambient partying.

The other tracks I heard at the listening session were "Here Comes Santa Claus," "The Christmas Song," the WWII-era favorite "Christmas Island," "O Come All Ye Faithful," and "Little Drummer Boy." How to describe the non-polka arrangements? It's an odd hybrid, Christmas in the Heart is. There's a decidedly rootsy feel to the basic instrumentation, with brushes on snare drums, country-ish guitar solos (notably on "Here Comes Santa Claus," which pays homage to Gene Autry's original), and plenty of Los Lobos' David Hidalgo on festive accordion.

But there's also a liberal useage of alternately male and female background chorales; not since the gospel years have you heard this many chicks cooing along on a Dylan record. I'm sure these backing vocals will be derided throughout the land as Dylan succumbing to an easy listening mentality, but I think that, as a sharp musical historian, he's deliberately evoking some of the classy Christmas records of his late ‘50s youth, or possibly the early ‘60s—then-reputable long players by the likes of Mitch Miller, Ray Conniff, and the Harry Simeon Chorale. There's also a bit of Andrews Sisters-meet-Emmylou Harris flavor when he's actually trading lines in some of the verses with what sounds like a small chorus of two or three women.

And what about Dylan's own voice? He is not exactly at the peak of his powers these days, but if you want flavorful, you've got flavorful. I was surprised that he picked some classics that demand he hit some high notes well out of his natural range, which sometimes he goes for and sometimes he doesn't. Thankfully, he does not attempt "Ave Maria." Simon Cowell, who once sniffed that Dylan would never make it on Idol, will have no reason to change his mind here, but who cares? The six tracks I heard all work terrifically, once your ears get attuned to what he's up to, though scoffers and even some diehard fans will surely think that he's given in to self-parody.

Don't mistake it for a toss-off, in any case; Dylan insiders say his heart really was in it—that he took the project very seriously and did a good deal of recording for it, spontaneous as it might sound. (It's worth a side note to mention that this is the first time he's ever publicly aligned himself with a charitable organization, and his income from it will go directly to Feeding America in the U.S., Crisis UK in England, and the World Food Program in other territories.)

A few weeks ago, a 15-track song list appeared on the Amazon UK site, along with 30-second samples of each track. The sound bites were soon pulled down, and Dylan reps insist that not only were these samples unauthorized and mysterious in origin, but Dylan wasn't due to finalize the track listing until this Friday. There was even some speculation that he might change the track list at the last minute just to spite whoever was responsible for the Amazon UK leak.

Of course, the now-censored samples were up long enough to be downloaded by many Bob-ologists. If you want a medley of what may or may not turn out to be the final 15-track album, you can hear it here: