Itty-Bitty Review: Planting Seeds - Maria Sangiolo

It is hard to make an "Earth Day"-themed album.

Well, it's hard to make a good one, anyway, one whose musical enjoyment outweighs any "life lessons" the album hopes to teach (the teaching of which usually fails because the music fails.)

I'm happy to report, then, that Maria Sangiolo's new album Planting Seeds is one of the few earth-themed albums families will want to listen to in April or even the rest of the year. This is partially the result of choosing good songs that happen to be about the planet we live on, and the plants and animals (including us) who reside upon it. It's only in that broader sense that putting Mark Erelli's version of the traditional folk song "The Fox" on an album "celebrat[ing] agriculture and sustainability" (to quote the back cover) fits. (Or the frustration with the bug world on Sangiolo's bluesy "Flashlights and Flyswatters" and Anand Nayak and Sienna Jessurun's "Noisy Cricket.") But it thankfully keeps the album from sounding like a lecture.

The other thing that keeps it from sounding like a lecture is that the music is quite good. Sangiolo pulled in Nayak, who's part of Rani Arbo & daisy mayhem, as producer, and like daisy mayhem's music, this album has a loose and relaxed feel, like a well-worn pair of jeans. Maybe the duet between Sangiolo and Nayak compatrior Steve Roslonek (aka SteveSongs) on Les Julian's participation song "Plant a Seed" took several tracks to record, but the genuinely humorous interplay between the two makes it sound like it was recorded live-to-tape in just one take. Sangiolo also is generous in sharing the album with many other artists beyond those already mentioned, include Rani Arbo and daisy mayhem on a couple tracks, Sally Rogers and Howie Bursen doing their best Pete Seeger on "Maple Sweet," and Alastair Moock and Lori McKenna on my favorite track on the album, "Didn't Know What I Was Missing." (Moock also co-wrote a number of the songs here.) The album is credited to "Maria and Friends," and the billing is apt.

The album is most appropriate for kids ages 4 through 9. You can listen to samples here. Planting Seeds is a celebration of the earth on which we live, but it's also a celebration of community. Sangiolo's community of friends have put together a collection of songs worth listening to (and maybe, eventually, learning from). Recommended.

Review: A Life of Song - Ella Jenkins

It's not easy to review Ella Jenkins albums for a couple reasons. First, she is a legend. I know that people throw around the word "legend" too easily, but if you don't use that word for Jenkins, then you may as well not use the word at all, at least in the kids music genre. And it's hard to review a legend because their outsized reputation, no matter how well deserved (and it totally is in Jenkins' case), provides an odd context.

The second - and trickier - reason is that her albums are not designed for listening idly to while zipping off to T-ball practice. Her albums generally feature Jenkins along with a group of kids -- Jenkins singing to the kids, the kids singing to Jenkins. It's like dropping in on a kindergarten music class with the recorder running. These sorts of albums are not the kinds of albums that a lot of casual listeners necessarily respond to.

Jenkins' just-released album A Life of Song is her first album of new material in eight years. Over the course of almost 45 years and nearly 30 albums, Jenkins has been a mainstay of Folkways/Smithsonian Folkways recordings, and the new album is, in some ways, a retrospective of her career. Not in the sense of a greatest hits collection, because all the tracks here are new, recorded with elementary students enrolled in an after-school program.

The album starts off with "Pick a Bale of Cotton," first popularized by another Folkways artist, Leadbelly. Ella tells a story in her gentle voice, and the kids trade off verses. You can hear Jenkins say, near the end, conducting the group, "A little softer," getting the kids' chorus to sing quieter as the song ends. Jenkins is a master of leading the kids, showing how sometimes it's better to talk quietly than loudly if you want to get kids' attention. And the kids enthusiastically respond in their call-and-response (they're kinda adorable singing out the names of various people in "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands"). Your family will enjoy the album more if you sing along, or even more so if you take the songs here and lead your own song circle.

Jenkins moves on from playground songs to spirituals to songs made popular in the civil rights era, even onward through the blues and Gershwin. It's a nifty, albeit brief, survey of songs important to African American (and frankly, American, no qualifier needed) culture. This is to be expected since the album is part of the African American Legacy Recordings series, co-produced with the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. (This focus means that another important part of Jenkins' oeuvre -- bringing songs of diverse global cultures back to the States -- plays no part in this recording.)

As the album progresses, the children's chorus makes fewer appearances, which gives Jenkins more of a chance to shine. Jenkins' voice is soft but effectively displayed on tracks like "I Want to Be Ready" and "Somebody's Talking about Freedom." And tracks like "Summertime" and "The Cuckoo," where she lends a little more expressiveness to her voice, are simply wonderful. Praise must also go to her fellow musician Rita Ruby, who accompanies Jenkins on guitar on many tracks and has a lovely voice of her own (she even gets an a capella turn on "Amazing Grace").

The 36-minute album will be most appreciated by kids aged 3 through 8. You can listen to samples from all the tracks this video if you want to understand how much other musicians and educators revere her.)

On A Life of Song, Ella Jenkins shows that, even at 86, she can capture audiences spanning generations. This is an album hat encourages you to turn off the CD player and sing with others. Luckily, it's good enough to listen to that doing so might prove difficult. Essentially mandated for early childhood music specialists and definitely recommended for everyone else.

Review: "Cat and a Bird" - Cat and a Bird

As someone who listens to a lot of music and reviews it on occasion, there's nothing quite like discovering a new artist with their first CD. Don't get me wrong, it's lots of fun to hear an artist you like a lot clicking on all cylinders, but the pleasure in listening to someone like, say, Justin Roberts, is that of hearing a sound you and your family have sort of come to expect performed wonderfully. Putting a CD into the CD drive and hearing a new, unfamiliar sound and voice -- that can be thrilling when that sound and voice click.

Cat and a Bird is fairly new to the scene -- the band's website isn't even set up as of this writing. But their self-titled debut bristles with an energy and self-assurance that pays dividends. Their sound -- mixing elements of folk, rock, electronic beats, and gypsy violin -- sometimes sounds both 100 years old and from 100 years in the future. It is impossible not to smile and bop your head while listening to these songs about the animal kingdom. From the album opener "Bee Jive," featuring some nice steel guitar work, to "Surfer Turtle," all sunny and filled with "la"s, to "Kangaroo," which (appropriately) bounces along carried by Emily Chimiak's vocals -- there's something to discover in each track. Chimiak's musical partner in the band Vasily Taranov ably handles most of the instruments (the violin is Chimiak's), throwing in ukulele and upright bass and more. I actually think many of the best tracks are at the end of the album -- I'm thinking of the dance tracks "Lion and the Challengers" and "Night Owl."

I would be remiss if I didn't discuss the lyrics as well. I hear a lot of "educational" music that is easily forgotten, but on songs like "Platypus," with its Tin Pan Alley, it memorably sings about the title character by mentioning what it's not ("He's got a beak, neither a cat nor bird / he's got mystique, although he looks absurd."). Nobody will pass their preschool zoology class as a result to listening to these songs, but the songs give some character and personality to the animals they sing about, and matched with the melodies and rhythms, they'll get enough spins to perhaps remember what they're dancing to.

I think kids ages 4 through 9 will most appreciate the animal/lyrical themes here. You can hear samples of the 37-minute album at CD Baby, emusic, and iTunes.

I can't take credit for discovering Cat and a Bird (that distinction, I believe, goes to Kathy O'Connell and subsequently Bill Childs). But I get just as big a kick out of hearing a new sound as anyone, especially a sound with as much style as this band's. It's a new sound, and one that clearly will gain a much wider audience than it has right now. Without a doubt, this is one of the year's best debuts, but more than that, it's one of the year's best albums, period. Highly recommended.

Review: Original Friend - Lunch Money

The music of the South Carolina band Lunch Money may be demure at times, but it's never been shy about wearing its anthropomorphized heart on its anthropomorphized sleeve. Which is one of its strengths -- a trio of thirty-somethings singing why they love their library might fail in the hands of lesser artists, but Lunch Money's giddy enthusiasm equal to that of kids thirty years younger makes the song work.

Original Friend is every bit as "open book" as its predecessor Dizzy, but this time around songwriter Molly Ledford's subject is friendship. Friendship temporarily lost and then regained (the strings-assisted 1-minute opener "Friends Again"); friends who are awesome (the title track, and a prototypical Lunch Money indie-pop song); friends willing to imagine with you (the pop-by-way-of-circus-music "Getaway Car"). This album isn't quite as extroverted as Dizzy was, but it features Ledford's strongest batch of songs yet. And while the dedication to Jennifer Jean Day, "who had the original friend donut" (and who Ledford is presumably singing about in the title track "What’s up today, Jennifer? / You say you’re writing a song? / Maybe I’ll try my hand at that for my whole life long.") might hint at some sadness, it's really a rather joyful record. Even songs about the possible interruption of friendship (the rocking "Please Don't Move (to Another Time Zone)") beat with a heart and with good humor.

That joy is due in no small measure to the large number of musicians who share the record with Molly, J.P., and Jay. Secret Agent 23 Skidoo turns in a great rap on "Welcome To My Dollhouse," Frances England offers her voice to "You and Me and a Bottle of Bubbles," and Dean Jones pitches in on "Getaway Car." And that's in addition to all the strings and horns, not to mention keys from producer Tor Hyams, who doesn't really tweak the Lunch Money sound, but just shares it with a few more folks.

The 34-minute album is most appropriate for kids ages 5 through 9. You can listen to samples here or pick up the mp3 of the title track here. Also: the illustrations by Brandon Reese -- the whole design really -- along with the off-kilter album credits (e.g., on "Picking Teams" -- "harmonica, forlorn yet upbeat - J.P. Stephens") make this an album that is so totally worth picking up in its physical format.

Because, of course, you do need to get Original Friend. Lunch Money offer up a tasty musical donut filled with lyrics that capture friendship, and, by extension, childhood in a way that is relatable to kids and recognizable to adults. Can I wear my heart on my sleeve? I love this band. Highly recommended.

Itty-Bitty Review: The Bestest of the Best - Dog on Fleas

Is it uncharitable of me to say I don't understand why Dog on Fleas hasn't had greater popular success? I mean, that statement implies a) that Dog on Fleas hasn't achieved tremendous success, and b) the American family-music-buying public is clueless (or, alternately, c) that I'm clueless). All the things that are part of the family-music success of, say, Dan Zanes or Elizabeth Mitchell -- the organic musical arrangements, the rescuing of lost parts of the American and world songbook, the hooks -- are right there. And certainly fellow musicians such as Mitchell and Uncle Rock know the Fleas and its chief songwriter Dean Jones and hold 'em in high esteem.

I'm hoping that The Bestest of the Best, the perfectly-titled greatest hits compilation of the New York band will help rectify the situation with the general public. It's a 20-song collection of tunes stretching all the way back to the first Fleas' album, Fairly Good Songs for Fairly Good Kids, and a fine introduction to the band's happy blend of folk, pop, and other funkier styles. I gravitated towards the selections from my favorite Fleas' album, When I Get Little, but there are other excellent tracks from other albums there, too -- the jazz-hipster "Dig" from Fairly Good Songs, for example, or the sweet, lazy, indie-pop of "Clouds" from Hoi Polloi. The album also includes 3 newly re-recorded versions of old songs plus their great rendition of "Buffalo Gals" with Elizabeth Mitchell and Daniel Littleton from the overlooked High Meadow Songs release.

In best Dan Zanes fashion, the Fleas' music is most appropriate for kids ages 3 to 93. You can hear samples of the tracks here or full versions of some of the songs here. Depending on how many Dog on Fleas albums you own, The Bestest of the Best, may merely be, well, fairly good. But if you don't have any Dog on Fleas, please get this album and find out what some lucky others already know -- listening to this band is a very pleasurable and joyful experience. Recommended.

Disclosure: I was provided a copy of the album for possible review.