Review: Ultramagnetic Universal Love Revolution - Mista Cookie Jar & the Chocolate Chips

Sometimes all you want is a lazy afternoon reading with your kid or playing Legos with them while rain gently falls outside.

This is not the album for those times.

Ultramagnetic Universal Love Revolution, the second album from Los Angeles' Mista Cookie Jar (and his backing band, the Chocolate Chips), is bright and shiny -- as chaotic a melange of sights, sounds, and smells as the boardwalk pier featured on the album's cover photo -- and intended to make you dance.

Just listen to the first track, "Inner Child Rock," and you'll have a pretty good idea whether the album is for you.  Mista Cookie Jar (AKA C.J. Pizarro) sings out his rapid fire lyrics while his daughter, 9-year-old Ava Flava, and Miss Mikyla chime in with background lyrics (their oft-repeated "We HEART you" is lodged in my brain for the next year at least), offset by the occasional "Let's get, let's get, let's get wild" bridge.  I find it nearly irresistible, but I admit that others might find it over the top.

There are some slightly less wild tracks -- in the liner notes for "Lover Not a Fighter," Pizarro said he "aimed to pilfer some of that Jackson 5 bubble gum-soul-funk-magic" and it's a worthy re-appropriation of the sound.  "Happy Place" is a sun-drenched groove that should be played loudly as the neighborhood kids jump around in the front yard slip-n-slide.  (If you or your kid want to double-down on the sonic craziness of "Inner Child Rock," I'd suggest tracks like "Lucas!" or "Best Day Ever EVER.") 

Lyrically... well, I think a sample from "Crystal Cave" illustrates where the lyrics sometimes go: "Inside ur heart there is a crystal cave / where the witches and the wizards invent their games. / They sew a string of sing-alongs / and tie them to the wings of swans / connectin' hearts to stars to cookie jars /in daisy-chain-trains!"  We are a long way away from songs about how to tie your shoe here, but it really fits in with the sound.

The album is most appropriate for kids ages 5 through 9.  You can listen to extended samples from the 43-minute album here.

As is the case with many good albums, Ultramagnetic Universal Love Revolution won't please everyone, and in fact some folks might downright dislike it.  But I think there are more than a handful of families who are going to absolutely adore the beats and rhymes and very palpable sense of love that pervades these dance tunes.  Me, I'm more in that second camp (and hope that everybody at least checks it out).  Recommended.

Make Believers - Secret Agent 23 Skidoo

Every time I listen to a Secret Agent 23 Skidoo album the same question runs through my mind:

Why isn't anyone else doing this?

Not the kids' hip-hop thing -- there are a number of artists mixing beats and rhymes and some of them are pretty good.

No, I'm talking about something a little more specific, namely hip-hop for kids who have kindergarten in their rearview mirror.

There is nobody making music for your favorite 8-year-old except for the Asheville, NC rapper.

Luckily for us, Skidoo is really good.  And on Make Believers, he elevates his game a little more, turning in his most adventurous and, yes, imaginative album.  He's always rapped about adventures and the power of imagination, but on the new album, drives the point home repeatedly -- if you have the courage to stand up for yourself and believe in your schemes, your life will be much more interesting.  It might not be easy -- and Skidoo is upfront about that -- but the alternative is much sadder.  He's much more interested in the daydreamers -- on "Space Cadet" Skidoo's daughter who performs as MC Fireworks trades off a series of crazy questions with her dad -- to him and his wife (Bootysattva, who sings the hook) she's their "little space cadet / and [they] wouldn't have it any other way."

If Skidoo just rapped his rhymes over plain beats, it would still be good, but his secret weapon has always been a musical community of dozens lending support.  "Brainstorm" features furious guitar work and a propulsive beat and the soulful "Rocketfuel" ("Treat your heart / Like a piece of art / And it'll be the spark / That lets you see in the dark") features organ and cello.  He and Lunch Money's Molly Ledford co-write the gentle "Snowforts and Sandcastles."  And "Hot Sauce" (all about trying things that are hard) features some Latin sounds. 

The 41-minute album is most appropriate for kids ages... you know, I'd like to propose a new subgenre of kids music.  A lot of kids music targets kids ages 4 through 8, with some focus on younger kids and virtually no focus on kids older than 8.  Independent artists in the genre have virtually ceded that ground to the artists getting airplay on Radio Disney and not necessarily recorded with 9-year-olds specifically (or at least exclusively) in mind.  Meanwhile, when it comes to books, there's a whole burgeoning genre of young-adult fiction, not to mention chapter books which have always been popular.  So I'm going to coin the term "middle-grade music," based on "middle-grade fiction," which tends to cover the age range of 8 to 12 -- yes, tweens.  Certainly kids that age will want to listen to Selena Gomez or Beyonce or whatever artist they covered on Glee this week, and sometimes the lyrical themes of those songs will resonate with the tween crowd.  But I think skilled songwriters can address the rest of the life experiences of that age group.  There is plenty of room to join in.

All of which is to say that Make Believers is a great album for the slightly-older kid in your life.  Secret Agent 23 Skidoo is a trailblazer in kids music in more ways than one, and while I hope he gets more competition over time, if we just had him making his music for this particular audience, I guess I'd be cool with that.  Highly recommended.

Review: Invisible Friends - Dog on Fleas

When interviewed about their music, it is not uncommon for kids musicians to say that they're not recording for kids.  It's a statement that for many artists puzzles me, because while I totally get what they're saying -- good stories and songs should resonate with a diverse audience -- it seems to deny what is obvious: songs about playgrounds or going to school or getting a dog are written with kids in mind.  They are kids' songs, no matter how good they are or how appealing to adults they may be.

New York's Dog on Fleas are one of the few artists making kids music whose music, stripped of context such as album art or a review on a website such as this, could legitimately be not described as "kids music."  Their brand-new album Invisible Friends taps into a feeling of childlike wonder and exuberance without ever sounding like somebody was tapping into memories of (anyone's) childhood.

What the songs do sound like, at times, are half-remembered childhood memories themselves.  The lovely and gentle "Fortunate Mistake" tells the story of a mouse (or someone the size of a mouse) whose name is indeed "Fortunate Mistake" while echoing the textures of Paul Simon's Graceland album.  (The lyrics "I bring good luck wherever I go / I bring good luck to you" sound to me like a blessing.)  On the other, more-minimal hand, the sung lyrics for the song "Party" are as follows: "I like to party, party, party / I like to party, party, party / Party, party, party, party, party, party, party!"  There's a little variation in that perhaps, but for the most part it's an excuse for Dog on Fleas mastermind Dean Jones to get his Memphis horns on.

Notwithstanding the occasional dance tracks, it's mostly a laid-back series of songs, with tracks like "Tell Me What You Love" or the group sing-along "Peapod" being the sonic equivalent of laying on your back in the shade of tree in a grassy field watching clouds go by.  Longtime fans of the band will may hear of lot of the last Dog on Fleas album, Beautiful World, on this new disk, but with some of the more electronic elements dialed back -- this is a much more organic album.  I liked Beautiful World, but I like this much more.

Given how much I've talked about the 42-minute album's all-ages sound, the idea of an ideal age range is sort of silly, but it's probably more appealing to kids ages 3 and up.  You can listen to the whole album here. 

Don't misunderstand me -- there's a lot of excellent kids music out there that is written with kids in mind, and I think that's great.  (Really, I think people should embrace that idea.)  But it's nice to have bands like Dog on Fleas blurring the distinctions between what is kids music and what isn't.  Like a preschool collage, Invisible Friends mixes stuff together that adults have long stopped mixing together but in spite of that (or possibly because of it) produces art.  Highly recommended.

Review: My Neighborhood - Johnny Bregar

In every reviewer's career, there are the artists you find, follow devotedly, and wonder why the rest of the world isn't quite as enamored as you.

Exhibit A, for me, I think, is Seattle's Johnny Bregar.  I thought his first three albums Stomp Yer Feet!, Hootenanny, and Dragonfly were on par with any recent three-album set from just about any artist you'd care to name.  While they were received positively, with radio airplay and cuts on a couple of Putumayo Kids albums, he hadn't received the attention that his peers (Justin Roberts, TMBG, Elizabeth Mitchell, a few others) had.

And then, 3 1/2 years of silence.  Much of that silence is because Bregar has been struggling to find his singing voice (literally).  And while that condition isn't fully resolved, Bregar has finally released his fourth album for kids, My Neighborhood.  For fans of the first three albums, it is good to hear Bregar's voice once more.

While I don't think Bregar's included too many more guest artists than on Dragonfly, he brought enough guests to his Bainbridge Island studio to make his rootsy Americana with a hint of bluegrass seem like a small party.  There's a mellow, soulful vibe to the album's best tracks, even a bit of wistfulness at points.  The title track recounts a stroll through the narrator's neighborhood, evocative of Mr. Rogers if he'd had a chance to listen to some Jack Johnson.  The next track "Weekend" evokes the best of the Counting Crows sonically in service of praising the fun of Saturdays and Sundays.

While Bregar still invites some younger kids to sing along (as on the uber-confident rocker "Yes I Can"), he's mostly moved on from the preschool songs he originally made his name on.  (I will admit to being tickled pink that Bregar, who I once called "the next Raffi," includes a simple, sing-along version of the Raffi classic, "You'll Sing a Song".)  Bregar's playing (and that of his guests) is unfussy, but there are some nifty instrumental turns.  I will admit to skipping forward past "Pancho," but the vast majority of the songs stand up to repeated spins.

The songs here are most appropriate for kids ages 4 through 9.  You can listen to selected tracks by going here and clicking on the "Listen Now" button.

I've laid it out as best I can without coming over to your house or minivan and commandeering the CD player or iPod and making you and your kids listen.  My Neighborhood is what we expect good kids music to be these days -- musically rich, thematically diverse, and (for older kids, anyway) lyrically sophisticated.  Please please please try it.  Highly recommended.

Itty-Bitty Review: Creepy Crawly Love - Duke Otherwise

It's been awhile since I've heard a good off-kilter kids music album, an album with a distinct perspective on song subjects and a musical approach to match.

If your family collection is similarly deficient, allow me to suggest Duke Otherwise, AKA Noah Riemer, whose debut album Creepy Crawly Love comes out of the Upper Midwest's House of Mercy Recordings to take up space on your family's CD shelf (or computer hard drive) next to John and Mark's Children's Record, The Great Adventures of Mr. David, or perhaps Zak Morgan (thanked in the album's liner notes).

Take "I Used to Think," a jazz-with-a-bit-of-klezmer tune with a hyperactive narrator sounding a bit like Sesame Street's Count declaiming that features the lyrics "I used to think the world was flat, not round / I used to think I weighed a thousand pounds / Can you believe I used to think that e=mcHammer?"  Or Tin-Pan-Alley-via-the-midway "Git Yer Fiddle Out," featuring (among other things) a dog toy, train whistle, trombone, and strummed fiddle, and lyrics like "Get your fiddle out and strum it / Get your trombone out and drum it / Get your xylophone and drive it / C'mon! Drive, drive, drive!" that only get odder from there.  Riemer obviously delights in wordplay, using nifty, brainy lyrics to sing about short-tailed dogs ("Dog Without a Tail"), the Spanish language interrupted by other languages ("How Do You Say 'No' in Español?"), and other eccentrics, all in a musical packaging that's like a slightly peppier Tom Waits.

While a few of the songs will amuse preschoolers, it's really kids ages 6 through 10 who will most appreciate the album.  You can hear clips of many tracks at the Duke Otherwise homepage, or stream a few full-length songs here. I would be surprised if Creepy Crawly Love became a massively popular hit -- it's a bit too off-center for that.  But these types of albums often become adored in some households, and if what you hear here tickles your fancy, then I think your household will give this album a happy home.  Definitely recommended.