Review: My Fabulous Plum - Peter Himmelman

There are albums (in all genres) that you can drop in and out of, where your attention can wander without ruining the overall effect. And then there are albums whose enjoyment depend upon a sustained mood, whose parts are greater than the whole.

Peter Himmelman's 2004 album My Fabulous Plum is the latter.

Heard in bits and pieces in the car -- the minivan is the parental 9:30 Club, dontcha know -- the album doesn't come off that great. Elaborately produced rock songs with a hint of Broadway stylings, with vastly different song palettes from track to track, it's hard to pin down. Not that the songs are bad -- "Sherm the Worm" is a fun, driving rock track with horns, but it's squeezed between the mid-tempo Shel Silverstein-esque fable "A World Where You Only Eat Candy" and the Caribbean-tinged self-empowerment ode "Ain't Nothing To It."

But Himmelman, who's been creating music for adults for more than 20 years, is an excellent songrwriter, and it's only once you've listened to the album in full that you appreciate the world Himmelman's created. Your kids will enjoy the silliness in songs like "Herman the Big Oily Moose" and "Cindy and the Octopus," and they might even hear the message in "Ain't Nothing To It," and "I Don't Like To Share." You might even come to enjoy the pure weirdness that is "Waffles," a spoken-word track. In no case does Himmelman ever talk down to his audience.

I think kids ages 4 through 9 will most appreciate the 36-minute album, which is the second of Himmelman's three kids' albums. You can check out samples at Himmelman's website for the album.

My Fabulous Plum has some strong songs, but it will probably take a few spins before you'll get the cumulative effect of the album -- a book of musical short stories and poems for kids. Recommended.

Review: The Tragic Treasury: Songs From A Series of Unfortunate Events - The Gothic Archies (Stephin Merritt)

As a parent of five- and one-year-old kids, I'm not quite in the Lemony Snicket core demographic -- my kids are too young to really be reading the books, and I'm way too busy to add another kids' book series to my plate. (I'm sorry, Harry Potter got there first.)

I am considerably closer, however, to the Stephin Merritt demographic and it's he, in the guise of his "Gothic rock-bubblegum pop" band The Gothic Archies, who has composed a song to accompany the audiobooks for each of the Lemony Snicket A Series of Unfortunate Events books. With the release of the thirteenth and final book in the series The End on, appropriately enough, this Friday the 13th, Nonesuch Records is releasing The Tragic Treasury: Songs From A Series of Unfortunate Events tomorrow, collecting tracks from all thirteen audiobooks for the first time on one disc. (How did this partnership occur? Well, Snicket's alter ego, author Daniel Handler, and Merritt go way back -- Handler played accordion on Merritt's breakthrough with the Magnetic Fields, 69 Love Songs.)

As you might expect given the source material, this is not exactly "Up With People." More like "Down With People." The opening track, from the first book in the series, has a pleasant enough melody, but with lyrics such as "You might be thinking what a romp this is / But wait 'til you meet his accomplices" and a chorus that goes "Scream and run away / run / run run run run run run run / or die / die die die die die die die," there's a lyrical darkness that you don't really get on a lot of kids' albums. OK, on virtually no kids' albums.

But having read the first book in the series to prepare for this review, I can assure you that the song totally matches the tone of the book with witty and intricate lyrics that are the equal of Snicket's words. Musically, Merritt singing style recalls one of the pioneers of Goth music, the late Ian Curtis of Joy Division. And the songs themselves, which peppy ("Freakshow") or moodily atmospheric ("Crows"), serve the lyrics, which typically don't tell stories (a la the intricate narratives of the Decemberists) as much as they serve as musical illustrations for the book. They're complementary, in the best way. It's almost a shock, then, to hear the "bonus tracks," the sunny (or at least only partly cloudy) "Walking My Gargoyle" and the almost snappy "We Are the Gothic Archies." The tone still matches that of the books, and "Gargoyle" is an especially fun track, but they do feel a little out of place.

The recommended reading age for the books seems to be about 9 though 12, so I'm guessing that kids 8 and up will enjoy the songs the most. You can hear three excellent tracks at Nonesuch's site for the album or the band's Myspace page.

I don't think families will want to listen to The Tragic Treasury on a regular basis if they have no familiarity with Lemony Snicket or Stephin Merritt. These are excellent songs, but they're for a certain time and place, and you may not be at that time and place yet with your family. If, however, you've got Stephin Merritt or Lemony Snicket fans in your household (be it you or a younger member), this CD is an excellent and darkly humorous romp through the world of Lemony Snicket and is highly recommended for you. (And it might even get you turned on to another great series in kids' literature. After all, I only need to get through one more Harry Potter book, and then I'll be looking for something else...)

So How Did That Singing Party Go Anyway?

A couple of readers have asked how my singing party for my birthday went, and before it's closer to my next birthday than the one just past and I can recall nothing from it -- a hazard of adding one more year to my age -- I thought I'd mention it briefly.

So I put together a list of about 15 or so songs collected from websites (Dan Zanes has lyrics and chords for most of his songs) and books (Rise Up Singing is indeed a great book for that), made about a dozen copies, and waited for the crowd.

We ended up with maybe 12-14 adults and another half-dozen kids. After eating hot dogs and cold cuts and drinking a not immoderate supply of beer and wine (uh, that would be the adults only) in the unseasonably moderate Arizona evening, we trooped inside into the living room. There I felt a bit like a bandleader shouting out "and-a-1-and-a-2," except that my ability to simultaneously read chords and lyrics, plunk out a melody and chord lines, and actually look at the crowd is, well, if not disastrous, certainly well below that of your average bandleader.

What songs went over well? At our daughter's request, we started off with "Do-Re-Mi" from The Sound of Music, which our daughter loves and is familiar enough for everyone to join in on, even without lyrics. "Pay Me My Money Down," though most were unfamiliar with it, has a fun chorus and went over well. "Polly Wolly Doodle" is easy and familiar. I was surprised at the popularity of "Waltzing Matilda" -- it was also fun to see the recognition of what actually happens in the song lyrics, which is a lot easier to determine if you're reading the lyrics and not trying to listen to someone with a mouth full of Vegemite. And, yes, everyone loves the Beatles -- "Yellow Submarine" was a big hit.

What didn't go so well? "If I Had a $1,000,000" went over like a lead balloon. I have a feeling that nobody would have understood a tossing the macaroni and cheese reference, let alone have actually done it. The kids had maybe a 2-song attention span before they all retreated to another part of the house where they could play in peace while the adults belted out their songs.

What would I do differently next time? Solicit requests ahead of time so that everybody was given the chance to sing one song they really liked and knew. Make sure that there was another instrument there -- our guitar players couldn't make it. And even though I'd tried making the font larger in the "songbooks," I'd probably go even larger next time.

So there you have it -- in the end, we had a blast, and everyone agreed that we should do it again, sooner rather than later. The evening was best summed up by a guest who swore that she wasn't going to do any singing, then admitted as she left that "I really didn't expect to sing as much as I did." You should try it yourself. (But leave the Barenaked Ladies lyrics on the internet.)

Radio, Radio

Heads up, people. Elizabeth Mitchell will be on the second hour of NPR's All Things Considered today (Friday). Go here later today for the link to the story.

Good on her.

Update: NPR interview here. My review of You Are My Little Bird here. And everything Elizabeth Mitchell here at the website (including my reviews of her other CDs for kids and families) here. And, if you're new here, once you finish with all that, explore a bit -- there's lots of other great music to be found here.

An Era Ends

Greasy Kid Stuff was kids music looooong before kids music was cool. For eleven years, Belinda and Hova have played a whole bunch of music expressly for kids and stuff that they just thought kids might like. (They also put out two compilation albums that I will get around to reviewing one day.)

And now, this -- tomorrow, Oct. 7th, from 10 AM 'til noon, is the last Greasy Kid Stuff show on WFMU. The page explains why (and leaves open the possibility for the show reappearing in some other form), but rather than quoting, just read the heartfelt note at the homepage yourself.

So after you listen to Bill, listen to Belinda and Hova. And go forth, e-mail them, tell them thanks for blazing the trail and give 'em one last suggestion.