Review: Lloyd H. Miller - S.S. Brooklyn

In the course of several albums with his band the Deedle Deedle Dees, Lloyd Miller (I'm sorry, I just can't get used to that "H." he's undoubtedly using to differentiate himself from the other Lloyd Millers making music) has indulged his taste for stories of people making an impact on the world -- Harriet Tubman, Mahatma Gandhi, Cool Papa Bell.  They're songs about famous historical characters, but they're primarily stories about characters.  The songs aren't about them because they're famous -- they're famous because they're interesting.

Although the Dees have had some success (and they're working on an album for release in 2014), Miller's primary musical expression has been his singalong classes throughout Brooklyn and for his first formal solo album, S.S. Brooklyn , Miller's gone to his singalong roots for some inspiration.  A song like "I'm a Duck!" has nothing to do with famous people and everything to do with waddling around a small space.  He turns Dees classics like "Henry (Hi Ya Ya)," "Do the Tub-Tub-Tubman," and "Honk Honk (Major Deegan)" into more intimate audience-interactive affairs.

Interspersed with these familiar songs are some newer songs, more intimate to the neighborhood -- personal history rather than history writ large.  "I'm Gonna Light Up the World" is a simple inspirational song that sprung out of Miller's trip to Haiti to visit a friend with a non-profit providing low-cost lanterns there.  "Working on a Bridge" (co-written with his daughter) is about metaphorical bridges, not about the many actual bridges in NYC (listen to ""Carroll Street Bridge" for that).  Meanwhile, songs like "Gowanus Canal" and "Brooklyn by Bike" celebrate the borough.

Dean Jones, who produced the Dees' last album, is back to produce this one, and he and Miller keep a light touch on the production -- few instruments, and somewhat raw, particularly tracks that are closest to Miller's singalong roots and those that feature kids singing.   I particularly like the closing title track, on which Miller in slightly rambling fashion fondly sings his memories of the community in Brooklyn and slowly builds until -- appropriately -- there's a big crowd singing the final chorus.  I was expecting to find more of a disconnect between the singalong stuff and the newer material, but surprisingly it flows together fairly well.

The album is probably most appropriate for kids ages 3 through 7.  You can listen to the 47-minute album's first three tracks here.

S.S. Brooklyn is loose, a celebration of life right next door.  Miller's neighbors will find this album thoroughly enjoyable.  Those of you in the hinterlands of non-Brooklyn (folks like me), however, shouldn't be scared off by that description, though.  There's plenty for you to enjoy even if you don't know your Park Slope from your Gowanus.  Definitely recommended.

Note: I received a copy of this album for possible review. 

Itty-Bitty Review: Pioneer Lane - The Watson Twins

I love being surprised by new music I hadn't expected.  It doesn't happen as much as it used to -- the kindie scene has matured -- but it still happens.

I hadn't heard that the Watson Twins were recording an album of family-friendly folk-pop until Pioneer Lane was released this week.  I still remember one of their sets at SXSW a few years back as being fun, and, in the dimmed lights of a church sanctuary, somewhat mysterious.  On the basis of that set, I thought that the prospect of a kids music album from them could be promising.

This new album moves their folk/rock/alt-country sound out of the sanctuary and into a barn somewhere for a late-afternoon picnic that stretches into a moonlight night.  The whole effect is mesmerizing, the sisters' harmonies reverberating on both the slow and uptempo tracks.  The songs stay away from narratives that would restrict themselves to kids -- these are love songs, if in language more geared toward the kindergartener in your life.  Highlights include the uplifting "Stay True," the sun-drenched pop of "Hello Hello," the hypnotic "Sun Drips on Leaves," and the paddycake-based album closer "My Family."

The album is brief, clocking in at just over 22 minutes.  It's most appropriate for kids ages 3 through 7, but this is definitely one of those albums that the parents will mix into their own playlists.  Pioneer Lane  is a tiny jewel of an album that will give the listener a warm, fuzzy glow, proof that kids music can still surprise and delight. Definitely recommended.

Review: My Cup of Tea - Heidi Swedberg

On her first album Play!, Heidi Swedberg gave us a celebration of the ukulele, playing (for the most part) simple songs designed to get uke-enthusiasts to play along.  The songs and arrangements were playful to be sure, and definitely more than somebody strumming the ukulele, but its ambitions were modest.

Move forward three years, and her follow up My Cup of Tea reveals Swedberg's true ambition -- to be the vaudevillian Dan Zanes of family music.  Yes, that cover photo, with family and friends playing roles of Civil War reenactors, Frida Kahlo, and barechested strongmen (to name a few), is a nice visual complement to the album's contents.  From the Jazz Age zip of the original title track which leads off the disk with a good dozen instruments and nearly as many voices to Swedberg's vocally dramatic take on Edward Lear's "The Owl and the Pussycat," if you're looking for an album with a single, distinctive groove, please move along.

The songs here are varied, and not in the "one song reggae, one song rap" approach that kids albums sometimes take.  After that Edward Lear song, the traditional folk tune "Little Birdie," perhaps the simplest song on the album, segues into the uptempo Panamanian tune "Al Tambor."  And while on a lot of albums, "Duermete," a Spanish lullaby, might be the album closer, Swedberg's duet with Cesar Bauvallet subtly turns into a Cuban-tinged raveup.  It's in these wild leaps from song to song that Swedberg and her collaborators -- primarily Daniel Ward and John Bartlit -- shine instrumentally.

Of course, given the wide-ranging musical interests, not everything succeeds -- there is no love lost between me and "Boogie Man," which takes a cheesy boogie theme and cranks it up to the point of clicking fast-forward.  And while I liked her more dramatic takes on "The Owl and the Pussycat" and "Istanbul" (made famous once more by distant cousin John Linnell in They Might Be Giants), some listeners might be put off by that musical playacting.  YMMV.

In true Zanes-ian fashion, there is very little here that could be pegged at a specific (non-adult) age range, so I'll call it ages 3 and up.  You can hear a sampler here.

You can appreciate My Cup of Tea  as a straight-up album of music from folk and world traditions played with verve and imaginatively arranged.  But I think you'll get more out of it if you think of it as a variety show without the banter, skits, and sponsor thanks.  In fact, somebody please get Ms. Swedberg a gig hosting her own variety show, pronto.  Signed, the Universe.  Definitely recommended.

Note: I was given a copy of the album for possible review. 

Review: Baby Beatles - Caspar Babypants

Let us first stipulate that there is no need for a Beatles cover album. The most popular rock band of all time, I have no doubt full cover albums number in the thousands (let alone individual songs, which probably approach if not exceed a million in recorded form).  The originals are permanently lodged in listeners' heads, often in a way that those listeners might wonder why anybody would even try improving upon them.

So, having said that, what of Caspar Babypants' latest collection of songs, Baby Beatles?  Is this just a cop-out, the kindie equivalent of digging into the Great American Songbook as a final musical cash grab?

Let's answer that last question with a firm "no."  As he noted in a recent essay, Chris Ballew, the Caspar Babypants mastermind, owes a great deal of his musical career to the inspiration of the Beatles.   It is better, perhaps, then to view this album as an homage to the lads from Liverpool and their songs, and in that regard Baby Beatles works quite nicely.

Ballew's entire Babypants career has been dedicated to making music for the youngest listeners -- while he certainly would welcome the kindergarteners who want to dance along, he's more interested in their younger siblings.  So while he's always been interested in stripped-down arrangements, that becomes even more important in a covers album where the tricky part is retaining the song's essence while giving the artist's own spin.  That's especially tough given how familiar some of these songs are. 

For the most part, I think Ballew succeeds, usually by making the songs nimble and as light as a feather, even more so than his previously-released songs.  "Here Comes the Sun" is peppier than the original, an incredibly joyful way to kick off the album (his version of "Ob La Di Ob La Da" with Jen Wood gives me similarly happy feelings).   I love the use of faint handclaps on "Birthday."  "Blackbird" hews very closely to the original, but why wouldn't it when it's so perfect to begin with?

I'm not enthused with every reworking -- "Yellow Submarine" and "Octopus's Garden" in particular sound too thin -- but the hits here exceed the misses.  And while some of the song choices seem odd and perhaps picked because of their ostensible ties to childhood ("Mother Nature's Son," "Little Child," "Cry Baby Cry"), those choices at least prevent the album from just being a recap of the Beatles' greatest hits.

The 20-song has a runtime of about 48 minutes and is most appropriate for kids ages 1 through 4, though, c'mon, it's the Beatles.  Just about everybody will recognize at least some of these tracks. 

I don't think any Beatles cover album is essential -- just listen to the originals -- but Baby Beatles is just different enough to hold the listeners' attention far more than they would for some random (often Muzak-inspired) cover.  There is no such thing as a bad Caspar Babypants album, and while I look forward to the next album of his original music and less-well-known traditional songs, this will do quite nicely in the meantime.  Definitely recommended.

Note: I received a copy of the album for possible review.

Review: Turn Turn Turn - Dan Zanes & Elizabeth Mitchell with You Are My Flower

Has there ever been a more high-profile collaboration between kids musicians than that of Dan Zanes and Elizabeth Mitchell?  The giants at the start of the kids music movement -- Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Ella Jenkins, Raffi -- don't appear in person on the others' albums.  And while collaboration is now the norm in kindie, with Mitchell especially as well as Zanes appearing on other artists' records, there is essentially no precedence for Turn Turn Turn , the brand-new album from the two kindie superstars.  (Aside from a Laurie Berkner duet with Mitchell on Berkner's holiday album, there's really nothing.)  It's as if Lady Gaga and Katy Perry teamed up for a new release, or maybe it's the kids music equivalent of Watch the Throne.  (And, not only that, the duo's touring together, too.)

All of which is to say the expectations for this album were probably pretty high in a lot of quarters, including this one.  So it took me a few listens to fully appreciate Turn Turn Turn, an album essentially recorded in a long weekend.  For those of you expecting the full-band musical travelogue experience of most of Zanes' Dan Zanes & Friends albums or the lush, mellow lo-fi indie folk-rock of Mitchell's albums with husband Daniel Littleton, daughter Storey, and friends as You Are My Flower, the sound is different.  That unadorned cover album photo, which looks like it could've been taken fifty years ago, is a pretty good pictoral representation of the music within.

The majority of the tracks are renditions of traditional songs, some of which will sound familiar to fans of both artists' previous work.  For example, "So Glad I'm Here," which Mitchell memorably recorded on You Are My Sunshine, here gets a funky banjo treatment.  I prefer the first treatment, easily one of my top five favorite Mitchell tracks, but I appreciate the attempt to mix it up.  Other songs will sound familiar just because they move in the same circles the artists have traveled in before -- the sea song "Sail Away Ladies" would've fit on Zanes' criminally unknown Sea Music, while "Raccoon and Possum" could have been recorded (differently, in all likelihood) by Zanes and Mitchell on many of their previous albums.  Mitchell fans may miss, however, the more modern not-obvious-until-recorded cover choices (Velvet Underground, Allman Brothers) on her previous albums.

There are six original tracks as well.  With "Honeybee," Mitchell's lone original, a gentle song with nifty wordplay that could easily be a lost Woody Guthrie track, she reminds the listener that for all her gifts as a song-interpreter, she has songwriting gifts, too.  (Don't hide them under bushel basket, Elizabeth!)  Zanes contributes five new songs.  I particularly like "Coney Island Avenue," a strutting, hand-clapping stroll through a local neighborhood -- a prototypical Zanes song.  "Now Let's Dance" is his best (and successful) attempt at a sing-along folk-dance tune, while "In the Sun" is a dreamy, mid-afternoon nap of a song that's probably the best actual duet here, a nice blend of their voices.  (Though "Shine," the closest thing to a modern pop song on the album -- though it's not very close at all -- is a close second.)

Suggesting an age range for Dan Zanes albums (and, to a lesser extent, Elizabeth Mitchell albums) is a fool's errand, so while it's not an album focused on toddlers and infants, kids of all ages should enjoy it.  As noted above, the instrumentation mostly eschews the fuller-band sound of DZ&F albums and fuzzy lo-fi rock of YAMF albums for a more restrained folk sound; look at that album cover again -- mandolin, guitar, tambourine, and ukulele.

Once you get past your preconceived notions of what this album should sound like (including this review), I think you'll find that Turn Turn Turn offers up many enjoyable moments.  There are a handful of dance songs for fans of Zanes' dance parties and some songs that showcase Mitchell's warm yet crystalline voice.  But the album's biggest strength is that this album of two of kindie's biggest stars features those musicians getting together to play songs humbly and joyfully.  Highly recommended.

Note: I received a copy of the album for possible review. 

Itty-Bitty Review: ¡Fantastico! - Lucky Diaz and the Family Jam Band

Although they’ve released just three albums for kids and families, Lucky Diaz and the Family Jam Band have almost enough bright, acoustic rock songs for kids and families to release a “greatest hits” album.  Diaz’ latest album Fantastico! takes a look back at some of his best songs, but with a twist.

Take “Gato Astronauta,” about a space-traveling cat.  In its original incarnation, the song had just two Spanish words -- the title.  With the help of Tejano music producers Noe Benitez and Christina Martinez-Benitez, Diaz reworked “Gato” and some of his other English-language hits into Spanish.  On the only entirely new track on the album, Diaz takes the traditional Latin American children’s singing game “La Vibora de la mar” and turns it into a shimmery pop song.  By marrying his bubbly pop songs to a new language, he's given the songs new life and suggested an alternative route to non-English music for kids.

The 22-minute album is appropriate for kids ages 3 through 8.  It'll obviously appeal to those looking for Spanish-language music, but it holds up even if you're just a fan of good kids' music.  A first-generation Mexican-American, Diaz grew up in San Antonio, Texas, and he says his mom is most pleased that he’s finally recorded an album in Spanish.  His new album neatly honors his family’s past and his own musical past while pointing the way to a new, very danceable future.  Definitely recommended.

Note: I received a copy of this album for possible review.