Review: See! - Holly Throsby

One thing that's been striking to me is the relative absence of an independent Australian family music scene, at least viewed from the American vantage point. One might think that the tremendous success of four nice blokes in bright t-shirts might have spurred a lot of imitators and counter-revolutionaries, but that doesn't seem to have been the case. In fact, you can argue that the Wiggles have had a lot more influence on the American kids music scene, either through imitators (the Fresh Beat Band), people headed in the opposite direction (many of the artists on this site), and folks with their feet firmly planted in both camps (Yo Gabba Gabba!).

So I'm glad to see that Australian indie-folk musician Holly Throsby has peeked her head into the relatively small Australian scene and offered up See!, which is one of most captivating family music albums I've heard this year. Recorded at an old church south of Sydney, the album kicks off with the sound of a horn heard off the coast as the intro to "Putt Putt," a gentle tune about going out into the ocean with a small motor boat. From there, the album moves to "Fish and Mice," which starts out with what sounds like a Casio drum keyboard and eventually leads to an infectious sing-along chorus with a bunch of kids singing interjections ("Fish!"... "Bike!"). This looseness in musical production is carried on throughout the album.

It's all very impressionistic -- moods and feelings and lyrics that aren't totally straightforward narratively, as on the winning Americana-by-way-of-New-South-Wales "Diamonds Are So Shiny" ("I have a deck of cards / And I'm in love with the two of hearts / I dug a hole with the ace of spades / I found a bone and some clay / And an old golf ball / That I hit around with my four of clubs.") She even includes an 11-second "Drum Lesson" that simply introduces a handful of drum sounds. (Also, I'm happy that on "What Turns?," Throsby finally writes a second song for a kookaburra, who, frankly, was probably getting tired of sitting that that old gum tree.)

The 28-minute album is most appropriate for kids ages 2 through 8. Right now it's only available as an import or from here -- either way, it'll cost ya about $30 Stateside, so I'd definitely recommend checking out 3 of the tracks here, as well as "The Seasons" here.

But See! might very well be worth the $30. It's a combination of Frances England's dreamy songwriting and Elizabeth Mitchell's appropriation of sounds and melodies from everyday life (with a little bit of Stephen Cohen's Here Comes the Band atmospheric tone thrown in). It is described as "experimental," though to American kindie ears it won't sound experimental at all. It is merely delightful in big ways and small. Definitely recommended.

Disclosure: I received a copy of this album for possible review.

Itty-Bitty Review: The Best Candy in the Whole World and Other Stories - Bill Harley

Not quite sure how I've managed to write this website and not review a disk from Bill Harley. Well, that ends now.

Harley's latest disk The Best Candy in the Whole World and Other Stories, out this week, is a disk of four stories (with a song mixed in for good measure). It features Harley's typical sense of impish humor, vocal stylings, and, most of all, humanity. In a couple different stories, Harley uses the phrase, "his/her heart went out to her/him," a lovely phrase that underscores Harley's approach to telling stories. When he's getting at the heart (pun intended) of familial or larger rivalries, Harley always sees the person underneath. There may be heroes and there may be villains in his stories, but they're almost never entirely so.

All of which makes the collection sound a little dull, which it's not. The stories (some original, some borrowed) are funny and imaginative. You can see the ending of the title track coming perhaps a minute or two before the actual ending, which is both neatly wrapped up and open-ended. You think you see the ending of the "Jack and the Singing Leaves," about ten minutes into the 25-minute story, but then Harley acknowledges what you're thinking (in the context of the story) and then takes it in a somewhat different direction.

The stories will be most enjoyed by kids ages 4 through 9. You can hear samples here. Bill Harley's albums of stories are usually good an hour's worth of silent attention broken by the occasional giggle or guffaw, and The Best Candy in the Whole World is no exception. Recommended.

Disclosure: I received a copy of the album for possible review from Harley's PR folks.

Itty-Bitty Review: Take It Outside - The Okee Dokee Brothers

I'll go ahead and say straight out that since I wrote some liner notes for Take It Outside, the second family album from Minnesota's Okee Dokee Brothers, I think you can guess that I like the album. I do, indeed.

It's a big step forward for Justin Lansing and Joe Mailander, who are neither brothers nor from Oklahoma, but who do share a big ol' grin behind their band's genial name. Their first album Kids With Beards was pretty good, but this one is stronger in every way -- musically, lyrically, and sonically. "Neighbors" sounds like they've packed everybody in their neighborhood into the studio for parts of the chorus. "Hero" features a soaring chorus and guitar work from the Honeydogs'/Bunny Clogs' Adam Levy. And midway through the bouncy "Antidisestablishmentarianism," they decide that "now we're going to spell for you / 'Cause that's what kids musicians do" and proceed to do just that. (Their joy mounts as they continue to sing as they provide a frequency distribution, for example, of the letters in the word, capped by the definition and a gleeful "what's that supposed to mean?" followed by "Who caaaaares".) They do reflective OK, as on "What We Got" and "Sweet Dreams," but their strength is silly and/or goofy.

Kids ages 5 through 10 will most appreciate the lyrical themes and humor, while their Americana/bluegrass take on pop-rock, polished to a nice sheen by producer Tor Hyams will have a fairly broad appeal. You can listen to samples at the album's CD Baby page. Take It Outside has an outdoorsy theme, but even more so it speaks to an engagement with the rest of the world. With good humor and heart, the Okee Dokee Brothers have produced a CD for even the most curmudgeonly recluse and the kids who just want them to play a little bit. Definitely recommended.

[Disclosure: I was provided a copy of the album for possible review. Though that's pretty obvious, I think, given this particular album.]

Review: Is This Some Kind of Joke? - Billy Kelly

Billy Kelly is the whoopee cushion of kids music. Last year he stormed (politely) onto the kids music scene with Thank You For Joining the Happy Club, featuring the instant classic "People Really Like Milk" and other songs that usually brought smiles and occasionally laughs to listeners nationwide. For his just-released follow-up Is This Some Kind of Joke?, a self-described musical comedy album, he dials the funny up to 11.

The album starts off with poppy Is This a Joke?, which in just 2 minutes and 45 seconds, exhibits most of the Billy Kelly style -- nifty rhymes, fancy words, and a song you actually have to think about and listen to carefully if you're going to catch every reference. (I've listened to the album at least a half-dozen times, and I still think I've only caught 90% of the humor.) I say "most" of the style, because that song avoids the self-aware humor Kelly employs often. It's OK -- he uses it elsewhere, such as on "Me and My Brand New Haircut," on which Davy Jones sounds like he totally gets the joke. The chorus on the dance tune (natch) "The Dance From Outer Space" is like the best Greek chorus ever. Kelly hits more musical styles than he does on his debut (I especially liked the funk-sampled "Everybody's Got Their Underwear On"), but it's all in service to the lyrics. If you've heard the album, the lyrics "I already told you I can see you," "Thank you for saying you're welcome," "What's wrong with that guy over there," and "Where is the turtle wax?" will bring big smiles to your face. It's a bit darker than Happy Club -- instead of a song called "Springtime: It's My Favorite" there are songs about an alien dance taking over the world and swamp creatures threatening to take over the world -- but nothing too dark.

And "The Legend of Johnny Box," which owes a big debt, unsurprisingly, to the Man in Black. Wow -- it's one of those songs that starts out unassumingly, builds up to something big, then somewhere east of Poughkeepsie takes a turn into something silly, then epically silly, then beyond silly into that realm few people are willing to go. Let's put it this way... it's more than seven and a half minutes long, and it's worth every second.

As with his debut, it's going to be older kids who most appreciate the dense wordplay and humor Kelly packs in here, say ages 7 on up. You can hear some of the songs at his Myspace page or samples of all the tracks here. I should note that the first 1,000 copies of the album in physical format come hand-signed and packaged with an erasable marker and an incredibly dense maze in poster format that might take your kids the better part of an afternoon to work through.

Like some mutant offspring of the Holland-Dozier-Holland Motown songwriting team and Spike Jones (or possibly "Weird Al" Yankovic's cousin), Billy Kelly has written the album that precocious third graders have wanted all their life and just didn't know it. Their parents didn't know it, either, but now they do. No joke -- this is a seriously fun album. Highly recommended.

Review: Many Hands (Family Music for Haiti) - Various Artists

If you have any tie to the family music genre, then you are undoubtedly aware of Many Hands: Family Music for Haiti, the compilation put together by Dean Jones and Bill Childs to benefit a variety of Haiti efforts. So there are really two components worth discussing here -- the music itself and What It All Means.

Oddly enough, I'm going to dispose of the big picture question first. The biggest worthwhile component of the project is that it'll benefit the Haitian People's Support Project, which supports nutritional and educational programs in orphanages, schools, and temporary shelters throughout Haiti. It's an especially important task in the wake of the devastating earthquakes there early this year. Beyond that, the album is pretty much the first family-music-by-family-musicians benefit album ever. Sure you have the For the Kids series, for example, but those consist primarily of songs recorded by "adult" musicians dabbling in the family music field. The fact that so many "new school" family musicians (and a few "old school" musicians) came together so quickly on this project speaks to the supportive nature of the genre, which bodes well for the future.

All of which I ignore when it comes to reviewing albums. My view tends to be, if you want to support a cause, support it directly with your money, time, and other talents, rather than doing so indirectly. (Or be forced to support a cause you disagree with because you support that indirect thing.) Luckily you don't need to compromise with Many Hands -- while I imagine the Venn intersection between families who like the new family music scene and families unaware that there was even an earthquake in Haiti would be small, you could give this album to those families, and they'd very much enjoy it.

Because it's a compilation, there isn't the coherency of theme you might get from a single artist (or a compilation focused on, say, the songs of a single artist). Essentially it's a really good mixtape, and the list of good songs here far outweighs the list of duds. Rather than list all of the really good songs, here are 3 that I think are particularly noteworthy:
1) Lunch Money's "You Are Here" is, as I've noted already, one of my favorite tracks, both for its album-appropriate theme of connection as well for its mostly-sweet, a little bittersweet melody.
2) Jones' duet with Hudson Valley poet Jerrice Baptiste is another sweet and thematically appropriate tune, with Jones' falsetto and Baptiste's more spoken-word vocals about building a nest underlaid with a folk-electronica melody.
3) Jonathan Coulton's "The Princess Who Saved Herself" is neither sweet nor thematically appropriate. It does, however, if I'm allowed to use this phrase on a family music website, kick ass. It's everything a parent of a daughter would want said daughter to hear in formative music-listening years. (Except for the reference to math rock. Really, who likes that?)

There are more good songs -- how could I review an album with songs from They Might Be Giants, Pete Seeger, Dan Zanes, and Elizabeth Mitchell and other luminaries and not even touch on their tracks? -- and, as I said they definitely outnumber the so-so ones. The album's probably most appropriate for kids ages 4 through 9. You can get the album in a lot of places, including Amazon, iTunes, and, starting in September, Whole Foods.

Simply put, Many Hands: Family Music for Haiti is the year's best family music compilation and one of the year's best kids music CDs, period. Buy two: one for your friend and one for your own family. Many families will thank you. Definitely recommended.

[Disclosure: I was provided with a copy for possible review. I also premiered a stream of an album track. And Bill's a friend. The kindie music world is a close-knit one. That's why you have this album here.]