One song into her Christmas show at Town Hall on Tuesday night, Aimee Mann offered a disclaimer. “This is a Christmas show,” she said in a cautionary tone, “and there will be Christmas songs.”

The concert’s host, a mustachioed comedian named Paul F. Tompkins, was standing next to Ms. Mann and playfully scoffed, “It’s like you’re talking about nut allergies.” A moment later he was singing an amiable duet with her: one of the season’s few nonsectarian standards, “Winter Wonderland.”

Thus the tone was set for a Yuletide variety show, complete with comic banter and special guests. (Fred Armisen, of “Saturday Night Live,” will be the host for tonight’s installment.) There were Christmas songs, as forewarned, but with no excess of piety. The evening’s ideal seemed to be the giddy warmth of an eggnog buzz. Hangover included of course.

Ms. Mann has a new album, “One More Drifter in the Snow” (SuperEgo), that focuses on the gloomier side of the holidays. On chestnuts like “I’ll Be Home For Christmas,” her alto conveys an anodyne sort of melancholy; she sounds a bit like Karen Carpenter, with somewhat cooler detachment. On the album’s two originals, “Christmastime” and “Calling on Mary,” she sings about what it feels like to spend Christmas alone, seeming both wry and sincere.

At times the concert countered this heartsick undercurrent with a glow of generational nostalgia. “Christmas Time Is Here,” from “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” received a respectful interpretation by Ms. Mann’s stylish band. And the indie-rocker Grant-Lee Phillips joined Mr. Tompkins for “Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy,” which David Bowie and Bing Crosby originally sang on a television special nearly 30 years ago.

As he does on Ms. Mann’s new album, Mr. Phillips joined her for the Dr. Seuss favorite “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch.” The result was delightful, thanks to the panache of Mr. Phillips’s recitation and the leering tone Ms. Mann employed.

For that Santa-stupefying balance of naughty and nice, Ms. Mann ceded the stage to Nellie McKay. At the piano Ms. McKay tossed off the evening’s most genuinely fizzy take on a Christmas song, although her “Frosty the Snowman” ended with a quip about raw sewage. After a haunting and desperate original, “I Am Nothing,” she cheerfully indulged in a product plug: “My album is perfect for your holiday suicide.”

Ms. Mann has that market covered, judging by songs like “I Was Thinking I Could Clean Up for Christmas,” from her last album, and “Christmastime,” which appears on the new release, even though it was written a decade ago (by Jon Brion and Michael Penn, now Ms. Mann’s husband). She sang both of those downers during the show’s final stretch, along with her equally doleful signature songs “Wise Up” and “Save Me.”

For the final encore Ms. Mann called her full cast onstage to trade verses on “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home).” It was a good, shambling way to wrap up, but no amount of camaraderie could hide a stark and lonesome plea.