Review: I Found You! - Caspar Babypants

Chris Ballew's consistently entertaining modernization of old folk tunes (and writing some modern folk tunes of his own) as Caspar Babypants is problematic.

For the reviewer, at least.

Ever since receiving his latest effort I Found You! for at least a couple months now and I've been struggling with how to write about the album.  It's his sixth full-length Caspar Babypants album, and just as every one that's preceded it, it's snappy music, simple but well-constructed -- really, just heaps of fun.

Which makes me a bit sad.

Because, really, if you are a Caspar Babypants fan (as I am), you may already have this album.  And you're probably reading this review a) to confirm your own initial impressions of the album, b) to confirm that yes indeed you should get the album if you don't have it, or c) because you're my mom.  (Just kidding!  I don't think my mom reads my site.)

That doesn't make me sad.  What makes me sad is that if your family hasn't gotten into CB at this point, nothing I could write about this album would likely change your mind.  Chris Ballew writes catchy hooks with the frequency the rest of write grocery lists, and you're not already listening to him?  My pitiful wordsmithing can't change that attitude.

The first tracks here -- the gleeful horn-aided "I Found You," the funky "Just Wondering," the preschool traditional "All the Fish" -- sound like many Babypants classics.  They're instantly catchy and perfectly constructed for preschoolers to grasp and sing along.  That's probably part of my challenge -- unlike a new band with a distinct sound, or an artist changing their musical approach, Ballew doesn't sound that much different here from his first album Here I Am!.  All the components of I Found You! -- the re-imagined folk songs, the obsession with animals and nature, the simple arrangements -- were there from the beginning.  For that reason, while I particularly like the title track and "Just Wondering," some of my favorite pieces are the songs that sound a little different, such as "Say Farewell," treated as a sea shanty, or the fun-spooky "Skeletone."

As with all the Babypants disks, the target age range for this album are kids ages 2 through 6, though it'll certainly have broader appeal than that.  You can find the 50-minute album at the usual kindie suspects.

Despite the occasional navel-gazing in this review, I hope I've also conveyed how excellent I Found You! is.  Just because Chris Ballew's found a groove in recording music as Caspar Babypants doesn't mean that uncreative reviewers such as me should spoil your fun.  Highly recommended.

Review: Binary - The Board of Education

Geek.

Nerd.

Dork.

Words that once carried a stigma are now bandied about with pride by many.  What are the increasingly subdivided niches of fans and supporters of pop culture but collections of nerds celebrating their own weirdnesses? (Note: not a slam.  After all, I am a kids music aficianado.  I know from celebrating tastes not fully embraced by the mainstream.)

Enter Seattle's The Board of Education.  If Recess Monkey and Caspar Babypants are the hardest-working artists in kindie music, cranking out albums in about the length of time it takes me to write this review, then their Kindiependent compatriots The Board of Education in are there to even out the average.  Their just-released album, Binary, follows their debut album by 4.5 years.

Perhaps it takes the band so long because chief songwriter Kevin Emerson and his bandmates are each getting advanced degrees on the topics covered in their songs -- the breakup of the Soviet Union ("Welcome Back!/Geography Quiz!"), Kevlar inventor Stephanie Kwolek ("Know Your Inventors, Part II"), or variable specific impulse magneto-pulsar rockets ("VASIMR (To Mars!)," natch). (No advanced degree is needed to enjoy the Star Wars-themed rant/plea "Why Is Dad So Mad?".)  All of which would be deadly dull except you can tell that the Board of Education really likes the topics at hand, and they know their way around a pop hook.

Hidden behind that brainy veneer, however, is also an appreciation for how humans make their way through the world.  Sometimes it's the chief topic of a song, such as on the delicate "Three," about a young elementary schooler navigating changes in friendship.  Elsewhere, such as on "Binary" or the totally and utterly awesome "I'm Not Here Right Now," the band merges those human understandings with geekier topics.  For an album filled with a bunch of space-related themes, it's remarkably down-to-earth.

The album will be most appropriate for kids ages 5 through 11.  You can hear a number of tracks from the album at the band's Bandcamp page.

So let's celebrate the obsessives, the adults (and kids) burning with curiosity about the world around them, be it light-years away, or at the school cafeteria -- The Board of Education gets you.  And you, obsessive (or parent of an obsessive), should you choose to discover the band, you might just find another obsession.  Highly recommended.

Interview: Jack Forman (Recess Monkey)

If Recess Monkey aren't the hardest-working band in kids music, then there's some other band who's figured out how break the 24-hours-in-a-day rule.  The Seattle trio has been cranking out a new studio yearly like clockwork, touring locally and nationally, and coming up with crazy-cool collaborative notions like Kindiependent, the Seattle-area collective of kindie rockers.

Their latest project, the recently released album In Tents, has also spurred a burst of creallaborativity (that's a word I just made up to reflect "collaborative creativity"), as it was the soundtrack for a kid-friendly circus show by Seattle-based troupe Teatro ZinZanni.

Last month bassist Jack Forman took time out during a "dingy, Kafka-esque Seattle morning" (his words, not mine), to talk about the album, the circus, and keeping things fresh when you're so busy).

Zooglobble: What are your childhood memories of the circus?

Jack Forman: I didn't go to the circus a lot.  I did go to the Ringling circus with my grandma in Indiana.  They had real Transformers and Truckosaurus, when I was 7 or 8 years old.  I've been interested in that combination of humor and darkness.

What are your favorite types of circus acts?

Oh, the contortion stuff, acrobatics, gymnasts.  There's this 11-year-old gymnast named Saffi Watson in the ZinZanni show, she's just insane.

Those are some of my favorites.  They're so good you sometimes forget they're just people.  I saw a Cirque du Soleil show recently, and when one of the trampoline gymnasts couldn't nail a landing, it was almost a good thing, because it reminded you just how hard these things are.

Yeah, there's the humanity, too.  It's refreshing to see when they've trained their whole life.

What came first - the album or the show?

The album came first -- we've been thinking about it for a couple years.  We kinda joked about it -- you know, hokey melodies for 3 year-olds, dinosaurs, clowns like you'd see at a teacher supply store.  But then we decided we wanted to steal back the idea from the cheesy preschool store and make it our own.  Give it a rich treatment, work with Dean [Jones, musician/producer].

Four months out from recording, I mentioned it to Korum [Bischoff[, who's a drummer for Johnny Bregar and who also works with Teatro ZinZanni, and before we knew it we spent 6 monhts with them working on a storyline.  Now we're so excited -- it's the coolest live show we've ever done.

So it's awesome live?

It's the first time we've played a record this fully live.  We've focursed on making our show dance-driven.  It's a pretty intense set, fully high-energy, sing-alongable.  Kids never sit and listen.  That's just what works for us. So there are a number of songs we've never played live.  For this show, we play 13 of the 15 songs from In Tents.

"Carousel" is my favorite musically, underscoring the performance.  There are 8 performers with costumes, a ballerina with 10-foot wings.  It's collaborative, complementary.  It's similar in some ways to a Flaming Lips show -- amazing visuals, interactive.  There are some moments where we're part of a larger team.  It's a dream come true.

Are there other favorites from the album?

"House of Cards," we don't do live, but the lyrics are really funny, and was the song most changed by Dean.  It started out as a ragtime song, then became a samba with a crummy Casio loop.  "Bouncy House" is really fun to play live.  You nailed the comparison to "Get Back" in your review -- yeah, even to the guest on keyboards.  (It was Drew's favorite song at some point at least.)

So you're probably the "Hardwest Working Band" in kids music... how do you keep the music and performances fresh?

Well, thank you for the premise of the question, that it's still fresh.  I was really worried a few albums ago (around Aminal House) -- how do you do it if you think it's the best you've done?  And it's been satisfying to detect growth each time.  We're playing more every year, which has helped as we've played new genres and can play new licks we couldn't do a couple years ago.  We've got 75-100 shows 'til the end of the year, but there's time to think about next year.  Maybe a concept record, maybe something more loose.

We really just enjoy each other creatively.

Other things you're doing to help with that?

On the business stuff, I took a year off to be with [my son] Oscar.  I do the booking and other stuff.  It gives Drew and Daron time to have more creative energy.  That's worked, I think.  It's helped to preserve the artistic core of the band.

What's next?

We're playing a lot -- a lot of time on the road with library shows and on the East Coast.  We'll probably add some circus shows. [Note: They're playing a handful of shows in August and September.]  And we're thinking about the new record -- themes, song ideas.

Photo by Kevin Fry

Review: In Tents - Recess Monkey

It's time for the annual kids' music reviewer's dilemma:

How to review the new Recess Monkey album.

Some kids' music albums are just so plain bad that it is easy to mock them (if you go in for that sort of thing) or ignore them completely (my preferred approach).  Other albums have such a unique sound that describing the sound becomes the hook of the review.  And then there are the artists take their own sweet time releasing their music, which makes returning to their music almost like hearing a unique take in and of itself.

Which brings us to the Seattle trio.  They're good (scratch that first approach), have no particularly unique sound (forget the second), and are incredibly prolific (they've now recorded 8 albums in less than 8 years -- they've likely written and recorded an album in the time it's taken me to write this review -- so I guess that take on the album's out, too).  I tried dealing with this problem by writing an entire review in haiku form last year, but for the band's latest album In Tents, I'm forgoing the weird stuff in favor of a plain review.

As you might suspect from the album title, the album is a concept album about circuses, but as with their previous albums, most of which have revolved around a theme of some sort (superheroes, space, monsters), it's a loose concept.  Yes, the leadoff title track is about performing in a tent, but the following track "Popcorn" could easily be on a food-themed or movie-themed album.  Most of the songs, in other words, stand on their own (except for "The Dancin' Bear," the Beastie Boys homage which is so deliriously odd and funky that it stands, or dances, on its own).

The album starts out with a very modern sound - "Popcorn" has a modern sound, while "Sit and Spin" (Tilt-a-Whirl, natch) has a driving chorus.  But as the album progresses, it regresses sonically.  "Human Cannonbal" sounds just a bit like the Who in their more musical-minded moments.  And for much of the rest of the album ("Dancin' Bear" notwithstanding), the band returns to the Beatles sound which inspired their early work -- "Bouncy House" includes echoes of "Get Back" and "Edwina Mae" sounds like A Hard Day's Night-era music, for example, and other songs like "House of Cards" have the 1920s vaudeville sound that runs through a lot of the Fab Four's work with George Martin.

In fact, as I listened to the album, I was reminded in more ways than one of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.  Some of the reason are minor (the Beatles' circus costumes on the album cover suggesting this album's theme) and some larger (the wistful song "Crystal Ball" and album closer "Show on the Road" striking echoes of that album -- "Crystal Ball" even includes a "When I'm Sixty-Four" shoutout).

Dean Jones' production here is clean -- it sounds a lot like any other Recess Monkey album, sonically, albeit with a little more trombone.  (I loved, though, the production choice in "I Could See (Magically)" to fuzz up the sound at the begin and to clear it all up once the narrator gets glasses.)  And he also lets the band's natural humor show through (Mayor Monkey! Drew Holloway's manic over-singing in "Sit and Spin").

As with most Recess Monkey albums, this album is most appropriate for kids ages 4 through 8.  You can listen to a few of the tracks at the band's homepage.  As always, the physical packaging for the album, this time featuring a backstory for the circus theme, is excellent.

There's not a lot of backstory here -- Recess Monkey makes music for kids, with joy and without pretense.  There are lots of other bands who do that, too, but few if any who do it as well.  As bands go, I'm not sure they're the Beatles of kids music -- who would want to saddle anyone with those expectations -- but when you look at the consistently high level of musical quality the band's given us over the past few years, perhaps it's not such a totally ridiculous claim.  It's a tough call, but I think In Tents is my favorite Recess Monkey album yet.  Highly recommended.

Note: I was provided a copy of the album for possible review.  Also, the band was invaluable in helping to create Hand Aid's "Felt Around the World."  But I'm a looooongtime fan.

Video: "Stompy the Bear" - Caspar Babypants

There's a pretty simple reason I continue to post Caspar Babypants videos here on the site.  It's because they continue to be awesome.  This one is for one of my favorite songs of his fine new album Hot Dog!, "Stompy the Bear."  It's by Charlotte Blacker and it's knitting awesome.  (Does the animation look familiar?  Maybe that's because you saw this video here last year.)

Caspar Babypants - "Stompy the Bear" [YouTube]