You Are My Little Print

By the way, it's too late for Christmas, but the awesome cover to Liz Mitchell's awesome You Are My Little Bird CD is now available in a limited edition run of 250. It's autographed and comes with a copy of the CD. (Which, since you probably have the CD, you can give away to some other person who'll be blown away by the album.)

You can get the print through the cover artist Ida Pearle's website.

Review: Not Naptime - Justin Roberts

Not Naptime, the title of the 2003 album from Chicago-based Justin Roberts is somewhat misleading. This album, Roberts' third for kids, is probably his most down-tempo, the one most I'd most likely play, well, not at naptime, but at least at quiet time.

To be honest, I've always thought Roberts' rave-ups and alt-pop were his best tunes -- think "Yellow Bus," "Our Imaginary Rhino," or "Day Camp." And so I think the best tracks here are similar -- the furiously played "D-O-G," or "Billy the Bully," an alt-poppy story-song about taking on bullies with a tension-filled bridge, released with a chorus of "one-by-one-by-one-by-one." The gentler songs, sometimes they work (the now slightly anachronistic "Nine Planets") and some are just OK ("Nightlight"). I should note, however, that Roberts is one of the best at writing the album-closing slow song that just about every kids' album seems to have. Here, he's so good that he's written two fine closers, "Dad Caught Stars" and "Last Night the Moon was Full."

With a couple of songs about school on the disk, the target audience here is probably ages 4 through 8. You can hear some samples here (or a full version of "Billy the Bully") at Roberts' website's radio player.

Roberts' oeuvre is broad enough that each of his five CDs is probably the favorite of several families. Not Naptime is certainly a good album, and recommended. Whether this most mellow of Roberts' CDs is your family's favorite depends on how you and your family like your Justin Roberts -- faster or slower.

A Very Sippy Cup Christmas

My grand plan to list a bunch of Christmas songs this December kinda fell apart under the typical rush of December activities, but I didn't want to forget the Sippy Cups' slightly-slowed down version of "Jingle Bell Rock," now available at their Myspace page.

(Thanks, by the way, to Gwyneth, who first pointed out the song at the Sippy Cups' own website. If you're not reading Gwyneth's site on a daily basis, you're missing out on some great roundups of news.)

Review: Down at the Zoo - George Carver / Papa Mali

Usually when I review CDs that aren't of the most recent vintage, it's because I want to go back and touch on a reasonably well-known CD and see whether or not it's stood the test of time (recognizing that that test might just be two or three years long). I've been writing reviews in one form or another for five years now, and even though I might not have reviewed everything, I've heard quite a bit, and heard of a lot more. But every now and then I stumble across a CD that makes we wonder how this escaped my radar screen.

Down at the Zoo falls into the latter category.

Even though I'm just now hearing the CD, it didn't completely escape notice -- it won an Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Gold Seal award. But this 2002 disk, from Austin musicians George Carver and Malcolm "Papa Mali" Welbourne (each with more "adult" recordings and bands), deserves greater attention, even almost five years later, because it's an excellent collection of family-friendly tunes.

The 35-minute CD includes 10 songs, all about the zoo or zoo animals. This theme, however, doesn't become at all tiring because the tracks are so strong. From the Cajun-styled opening title track all the way through to the final reggae tune, "Jammin' at the Zoo," Carver and Welbourne have crafted strong melodies and matched them with accessible lyrics. The pure country of "I Don't Like My Cage" touches on the good and bad of zoos for endangered species ("I don't like my cage / It's not where I should be / But it's all that's keeping my kind / from being a memory.")

On top of that, Carver and Welbourne have recruited an able group of musicians to join them on these tunes, which besides those mentioned above include the folk-blues ("They Got Feet"), big band ("Jungle Swingers"), and what a Tom Waits kids' track might sound like ("Snake House"). The band really tears it up on my favorite track, the soulful and funky "The Funky Yak."

The album's best for kids ages 2 through 7, though older kids may still dig it well past the age of 7. You can hear samples at the album's CDBaby page.

Better late than never? In this case, yes. Down at the Zoo may be five years old, but this fine album is worth a listen even today. Definitely recommended.

Tiny Mix Tapes for Tiny Mix Tapers

Another day, another YAKMA (Yet Another Kids Music Article), this time from the fine folks at Tiny Mix Tapes, which I've been reading for a number of years now. (Really.)

It's a detailed article on the current crop of "adult" artists making kids music, with quotes from Saint Etienne's Bob Stanley and Paper Bag Records' Leila Hebden and a review of classic albums from years past. The article never really gets into which ones are "excellent" and which are "crappier than crappy nappies," but, oh well.

While I'm not sure it's of much news to regular readers here, the article certainly casts outside the regular cast of characters normally interviewed for a YAKMA. It also provides this one nugget of information that's news to me: Saint Etienne plans to release the Up the Wooden Hills EP as a full album in 2007. I knew that was the plan eventually, but had not seen a date (or an article with a Saint Eitenne quote) before. I've been meaning to review the EP for some time now -- better make sure I do that before the full album is released...