Review Four-fer: Hullabaloo, Alphabeticians, Mister G, Monty Harper

As you would probably expect, I get many more disks than I could possibly have time to review (unless somebody decides that they want to nominate me for a MacArthur Fellowship). Given my time constraints, there are many reasons why I don't review an album, including it stinks or I can't figure out what to say about it. But there are a number of decent albums with a particular point of view that don't get reviewed in a timely manner just because life goes on. Here, then, are four albums, each with a different approach to the genre -- your family is likely to dig at least one of them.

San Diego-area musician Steve Denyes is a prolific songwriter (see here for a side project of mine he originated), cranking out a Hullabaloo album at least once a year. His latest record Road Trip tackles the theme of, well, car travel (natch), with thirteen tracks covering the experience (truckers' horns, traffic jams, the unfortunate demise of bugs on the windshield). The opening title track is a fun country-rocker, while the rest of songs take a slightly mellower, folkier, Johnny Cash-ier approach. (You can stream the album here.) The album is most appropriate for kids ages 2 through 7. In one sitting, the songs begin to run together, but there are a lot of songs here that would work well in a mixtape for your next trip. Recommended for: your next trip to Grandma's house, your afternoon errand-run.

Moving up the coast to Portland we find The Alphabeticians, a duo consisting of Eric Levine and Jeff Inlay, AKA Mr. E. and Mr. Hoo, which gives you a little sense of the goofiness that this duo trades in on their formal debut Rock. A little bit of the Pixies and R.E.M. (literally, in the case of the song "Eric Saw Peter Buck's Girlfriend and Then He Saw Peter Buck"), with a healthy dose of They Might Be Giants, "Weird Al" Yankovic, and Schoolhouse Rock mixed in. It could use a little more polish production-wise in spots, but there are some great songs in there (I recommend giving "Metaphor" and "Monkey on my Shirt" a spin at the album's streaming page.) The album's most appropriate for kids ages 3 through 8. Recommended for: the sassy younger kids on TV sitcoms, families who have at least one TMBG album (kids' or adult's) around the house, kids who want lots of alphabet practice.
Rather than the more narrow stylistic approaches of Hullabaloo and the Alphabeticians, on his second album Bugs, Massachusetts-based Mister G (AKA Ben Gundersheimer) tackles a broader range of styles, including not a few tunes with some "world music" influence (e.g., "Grilled Cheese" is an ode to the sandwich set to a ska beat). It's a slick set of tracks that, save for the topics and lyrics (very much for the second grader in your life), in many cases (e.g., "Friends" or "Snow Day") would sound appropriate on your local AAA station. You can listen to the album here. The album's most appropriate for kids ages 4 through 9. Recommended for: the minivan carpool, families looking to bridge the gap between kindie rock and Putumayo Kids, kids tired of listening to their parents' favorite AAA station.

The final album in our quartet of reviews is Songs From the Science Frontier from Oklahoma's Monty Harper. If They Might Be Giants' Here Comes Science was the elementary school introduction to science, Science Frontier is the junior high science club follow-up, not only raising the question, for example, of "What is the Shape of the Molecule?" but also attempting to answer it (or, at least, explaining how a scientist might answer it). In fact, the majority of songs don't address scientific facts as much as they address scientists and the scientific process. Lest this sound dull, Harper knows his way around a melody and (his often necessarily wordy) lyrics much better than others who trawl educational waters (check out the sing-along chorus on "Microbe Hunter" or the neatly constructed syncopation on "Bat Man"). Chris Wiser (who produced the album) and Rob Martin from Sugar Free Allstars add some musical punch. You, or your kids primarily aged 7 through middle school can listen to the album here. I wouldn't expect too many people to listen to the album straight through if they don't have some current science relationship, but unlike many "educational" albums, you'd actually make it all the way through even if you don't. Recommended for: science teachers and classes, kids who play with their Legos or spend twenty minutes following bugs around, your local Beatles-loving scientist.

Review: Sing Along! - Caspar Babypants

OK, you have folks like Raffi and Ella Jenkins and Justin Roberts -- people who, once they started recording music for kids, showed little interest to breaking away from that and recording for adults. But there's a long history of "adult" artists dipping their toes into the world of kids' music -- Carole King, Johnny Cash, Harry Nilsson, Tony Bennett, all the way up through They Might Be Giants, Lisa Loeb, and Barenaked Ladies and every artist who's ever recorded a song for kids' music compilation. Some, like TMBG (or Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie long before them), spend a lot of time there, but usually the artists return to the world of checking for fake IDs and adult themes.

Which is what makes watching Chris Ballew, longtime Presidents of the United States of America member, so interesting to me. In less than four years, he's released four albums for families as Caspar Babypants, including this week's new release, Sing Along!. Over the course of that time period, Ballew has thrown himself into the project with energy and has tapped a rich vein of creativity. While all four of his albums are very good, this new one is my favorite and one of the best albums of the year.

It starts off with "Bad Blue Jay," with its "Yes, sirs" and "No, sirs" clearly inspired by the "Yes, ma'ams" and "No ma'ams" of the kids' classic "Mr. Rabbit." Next is "Wild Wild Time," which uses an old Beethoven melodic line. And on it goes, with Ballew pulling in influences from all over and creating new folk songs or in time-honored folk tradition, tweaking classics like "Ba Ba Black Sheep" or giving a hint of Beach Boys sound on "Long Long Dream." Also, I really dig Mike "Outtasite" Singleton's rap turn on the classic "Dem Bones." And while Ballew's always been willing to do very simple music for the very young, doing things like getting Frances England to duet with you on "Loud and Quiet" (or Rachel Loshak on the album-closer "Baby Cloud") makes those teachable songs listenable long after the concepts have been mastered.

The album's targeted at kids ages 1 through 5, though hopefully I've made clear that older kids will dig it, too. You can hear samples here.

I really, really like Sing Along! -- the Caspar Babypants disks have been favorites at our house for a long time, and I see no reason why this new album won't join its predecessors in heavy rotation. If he can keep it up, Chris Ballew might just create a body of work for preschoolers to rival Raffi's. Highly recommended.

Itty-Bitty Review: The Littlest Star - Meadows

The annoyance some parents feel upon hearing the classics of kids' music isn't due to the melodies themselves. The melodies, in fact, because they've survived for centuries in some cases, are some of the best ever. Parents' anger, rather, is a result of repetition and, sometimes, poor execution. The littlest things, like providing the barest minimum of interesting accompaniment and slightly different (but real) instrumention, can push the date of the inevitable "I can't take this anymore!" way out into the future.

So it is with The Littlest Star, the debut album from Meadows. The band is a side project from musician and composer Keith Kenniff and his wife Hollie (who also perform together in their indie-rock band Mint Julep). Most of the tracks are renditions of standard wiggleworm-y classics like "Shoofly Don't Bother Me," "King Kong Kitchie Kitchie Ki-Me-O," and "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star." The arrangements are muted and tasteful, lots of acoustic guitar and piano. Hollie Kenniff gets the majority of vocals here; her relaxed voice induces calm and fits the simple tunes perfectly. Their banjo-assisted take on "You Are My Sunshine" is particularly lovely. The originals (e.g., "Flutter Like a Butterfly," "Three Kangaroos") are pleasant enough, but tend toward the cute end of the spectrum and I found myself preferring the standards to these.

The 33-minute album is most appropriate for kids ages 0 through 5. You can hear samples at their homepage, but to listen to fill tracks, check out the Unseen Music YouTube channel. You'll probably find Meadows' sound as reminiscent of Elizabeth Mitchell's (minus the inspired cover song choices). I'd go with Mitchell's CDs over The Littlest Star, but the fact that I'm even bothering to compare the two speaks highly of the Meadows' ability to make childhood classics listenable for a long time. Recommended.

Disclosure: I received a (digital) copy of the album for possible review.

Itty-Bitty Review: Hey Pepito! - Key Wilde & Mr. Clarke

Oh, to have the energy of Pepito, the titular squirrel the latest EP of Key Wilde & Mr. Clarke. I'd be able to knock out these reviews in four, five minutes flat. Perhaps I could do that if I just wrote something like, "I've yet to hear a Key Wilde & Mr. Clarke song that I haven't liked" and left it at that.

But you probably expect just a little bit more (even though it's true). So, then, in brief, the six songs of Hey Pepito!:
1) "Pepito": a gigantic adrenaline rush that might, in the long run, get a little wearisome when you listen to it for the four-hundredth time, as your kids will invariable make you do. (Purchase the album via Little Monster (or the widget below) and get an e-copy of a Wilde-drawn comic featuring Pepito to boot.)
2) "Don Mario's Song": Another ear-wormy chorus, with the added benefit of an extended Latin percussion break, each instrument named in turn. I love "Pepito," but I think this is the best song on the album.
3) "Talking Big Pet Pig": This pig looms large in KWMC iconography -- here he gets an origin story, done Dylan-pre-electric-style.
4) "It's So Good": Previously released, is that a samba I hear?
5) "Mary the Fairy": Also previously released, the story of a flight-challenged and inattentive fairy.
6) "Summer Lullaby": As tender a song as "Pepito" and "Don Mario's Song" are rave-ups.

The songs are most appropriate for kids ages through 3 through 7. Listen to the whole EP by streaming it via the player below. Hey Pepito! is a fun 22 minutes, a worthy albeit brief follow up to their wonderful debut Rise and Shine. Or, to put it another way, I've still yet to hear a Key Wilde & Mr. Clarke song that I haven't liked. Definitely recommended.

[Disclosure: I received a copy of the album for possible review.]

Itty-Bitty Review Two-Fer: Mr. Leebot and Lloyd Miller

There are pitfalls in trying to be objective in reviewing music, especially in the close-knit world of kindie music, where if everybody doesn't know everybody (yet), the degrees of separation are small enough that it makes Kevin Bacon look like a loner. And while I deal with that constantly here, adding a layer of "good works" on top of it all, well, consider this then your grain of salt for the two albums discussed here.

First off is Austin's Mr. Leebot, whose latest album Erratic Schematic is fundraiser for an orphanage in Ethiopia from which Mr. Leebot (AKA Lee Davila) and his wife recently adopted two babies. As I've previously mentioned, the idea of adoption is important to me, so I was predisposed to like this album from the get-go. While Mr. Leebot's sound -- think of him as DEVO's kids music side project -- may not be for everyone, he's started to ever-so-slightly fill out his sound (I like the New Wave sound of "Cleaning Theme"). As a whole, it's Leebot's best album yet. And the track at the heart of the album -- "Our Family" -- should be heard far and wide. (Listen to it here -- just scroll down the page.)

The album is most appropriate for kids ages 3 through 7. You can listen to samples here.

As for an album geared toward a slightly older crowd, how about Hamlet? That's for high schoolers, right? Well ,The Deedle Deedle Dees' Lloyd Miller would beg to differ, having helped his wife's second grade class to write a musical based on the play. Miller recruited Dog on Fleas' Dean Jones and a couple of the Dees to record the music along with kids in the class. The result, Hamlet: The Album, is alternately rockin' ("Something's Rotten!") and pensive ("Tush, Tush") -- a little bit like the play itself, no? In best Fleas/Dees fashion, the album is ragged around the edges, the Band or the Stones mixed with a Shakespeare and Sesame Street. I'd much rather listen to these kids sing than any number of auto-tuned KidzBoppers.

The album will be most appreciated by kids ages 6 to 11. And if the story behind the album isn't appealing enough, perhaps you'll be heartened to hear that all profits from the album will go to Japan earthquake relief. Listen (or order the album) below.

While neither Erratic Schematic nor Hamlet: The Musical have a broad enough appeal for me to endorse the albums unreservedly for all listeners, both are solid enough albums to merit a listen even without the totally worthy backstories. I think a lot of readers will find a lot to like here. Give 'em a spin, maybe even your ducats. Recommended.

Disclosure: I received a copy of Erratic Schematic for possible review.