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.

Itty-Bitty Review: Look Both Ways - ScribbleMonster & His Pals

I'm not sure whether covering obscure Sesame Street songs is either foolish or genius. But that's exactly what Chicago-area band ScribbleMonster have done on their just-released new album Look Both Ways. Aside from the opening track (their cover of the show's theme song), the casual fan (adult or youth) is likely to recognize few (if any) of the songs here. What the band might lose from "Rubber Duckie" completists skipping the collection they gain from the freedom of putting their own stamp on some of the best songwriting for kids anywhere. One some tracks, you can't picture another band covering these songs any better than they are. On both "Loud and Soft" and "Stop!" the power-pop band hit just the right enthusiastic/giddy/slightly silly tone that will motivate kids to sing along and participate. This silliness also shines in the duet with ScribbleMonster (the, er, monster) and kids musician Steve Weeks on "Clink, Clank." (The phrase, "Right, I take this xylophone mallet," makes me smile every time.) They also provide distinctive covers of the slightly-disturbing (at least to my memory) "I Want To Hold Your Ear" and the sunny "Someday, Little Children," featuring Racer Steve from Princess Katie & Racer Steve on guitar. The songs are most appropriate for kids ages 3 through 7. You can hear samples from the brief (26-minute) album at the album's CD Baby page or five full tracks at the band's radio page. I'm still not sure whether covering semi-obscure Sesame Street songs is foolish or genius, but it's hard to go wrong with folks like Joe Raposo and Jeff Moss writing songs and ScribbleMonster performing 'em. Recommended. Disclosure: I was provided with a copy of the album for possible review.

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.

Itty-Bitty Review: Joey's Song for Kids, Volume 1 - Various Artists

It's hard to review benefit albums because the worthy cause behind most such albums makes reviewing the music itself difficult. Who wants to say the album's bad if the cause is good? In the case of Joey's Song for Kids, Volume 1, luckily, the songs are mostly pretty good. First, the cause -- the album benefits The Joseph Gomoll Foundation, which raises money for epilepsy research and advocacy in honor of Joey Gomoll, who died suddenly at the age of 4 while afflicted with Dravet's Syndrome, a rare form of epilepsy. After his passing, his dad channeled his energies into establishing the Foundation and getting literally dozens of artists to donate songs (mostly unreleased ones at that) for a series of benefit albums, some with music for adults, some for kids and families. Which brings us to the music itself. The first few songs, while certainly competent, aren't terribly exciting, staying in a bland album-oriented-rock rut. If you've heard a dozen or more different versions of "The Wheels on the Bus," for example, Lowen & Navarro's version isn't going to stand out at all. But a few songs through, maybe around April Smith and The Great Picture Show's fun and bouncy "Say, Say, Oh Playmate," the album gets more interesting and mostly stays that way. Jon Dee Graham's previously-released "Hippopotamus," is a great little acoustic country-folk tune, and Ellis Paul (no stranger to family music) turns in a wistful "Mr. Teetot." Special mention also goes out to Gurf Morlix's previously released "Dan Blocker" - not specifically a kids song, but the one most likely to be stuck in family's heads. The album is probably most appropriate for kids ages 3 through 7. (For those of you without kids in that age range, you may also care to try the similarly-titled Joey's Song, Volume 1, a collection of songs for adults from the same types of artists - Neko Case, HEM, Robbie Fulks - found on the kiddo version, though I think I preferred the kids' album.) In the end, beyond the worthy cause, Joey's Song for Kids, Volume 1 stands on its own merits musically. Good intentions aside, it's an album that will likely be played after the initial charitable impluse has subsided. Bring on Volume 2. Recommended. Disclosure: I was provided a copy of the album for possible review.

Itty-Bitty Review: Wacky's Tackle - The Hollow Trees

Always a little bit under the radar, Los Angeles' The Hollow Trees were brave (or foolish) enough to release a non-holiday-themed disk in the month of December. Now that it's January and our trees and candles are packed away, we can turn our attention back to anthropomorphized animals bringing joy kids everywhere. I'm talking, of course, about the residents of Nelsonville, the headquarters of a whole bunch of cartoon animals, who make their third appearance on the recently-released Wacky's Tackle. The mythology of Nelsonville has never been particularly overt on the Hollow Trees' albums, and I think you probably could've wiped all traces of Nelsonville from the packaging and not really be confused. What you'd be left with is another nifty collection of folk tunes, some original, some more classic, from the large group of musicians Greg McIlvaine and Laure Steenberge have pulled together. I like their energetic take on the classics "The More We Are Together" (first made popular by Raffi) and "Funiculi Funicula," both full of life. At other times, such as on "Free Little Bird," they employ a bluegrass sound. And every so often they range further afield -- my two favorite tracks are the missing Beach Boys track "Barefoot Beach" (if it isn't, it should've been) and a very jazzy "Boll Weevil." The album is most appropriate for kids ages 3 through 7. You can hear samples of all the tracks at the album's CD Baby page or hear/download selected tracks here. Wacky's Tackle is another solid album from a group who themselves have flown a bit under the radar. I hope it doesn't stay that way, and the new album deserves a bit of a spotlight. Recommended.

Review: Shoe Baby, Flyaway Katie, Penguin - Tom Gray (Gomez)

I'd heard about the music that guitarist Tom Gray of the British band Gomez had done for a couple of kids' puppet shows for at least a couple years now. So was it merely an amazing coincidence or was it fate that I had an e-mail ready to go to Katherine Morton and Polly Dunbar, proprietors of Long Nose Puppets and creators of said puppet shows, when I received the press release saying that that very music would finally be made available on iTunes? The answer is probably irrelevant, but does provide some background as to why I was particularly eager to give the music a spin. Gray's first score was for the 2006 puppet show Shoe Baby, the first Long Nose Puppets production and an adaptation of a children's book written and illustrated by Dunbar's mother Joyce Dunbar. (It's about a baby who disappears in a shoe and has lots of interesting travels.) Compared to the two later productions, the gentle pop-folk music for Shoe Baby is pretty simple in terms of orchestrations, but it might almost be the album that least needs the visual of the puppet shows (or the books) to understand the music.

The second show, Flyaway Katie, was based on Polly Dunbar's book, which (the book -- and presumably the puppet show) is about a girl who dresses up very colorfully and becomes a bird (briefly). As you might expect, there are lots of songs about colors -- a moody one about gray, a mellow one about green, and bright one about the yellow sun. It's more orchestrated than the first show -- literally, in some cases, as strings make an appearance on several songs, and Gray even duets with another singer on one of the tracks. (My favorite track: "The Red Bus".")There's also a Mark Mothersbaugh-like instrumental "The Mice Theme" that is very pretty though makes less sense without the context of the puppet show itself.

The newest show is Penguin, which debuted just last year. It's also based on one of Polly Dunbar's books about a silent penguin. Without visuals for the puppet show, it is easest perhaps to follow along to the narrative arc in this album. (There's another fun instrumental in "A Lunar Tune," all spacy and with bleeps and bloops.) That may make things confusing if you're listening without benefit of the book (who exactly the singer singing to in the funky second-line-like "Say Anything" is not clear unless you know it's boy singing to his silent penguin). But I think the songs here are the most engaging and most beautiful of the three albums -- "Penguin's Song" could easily rest outside the kids music world. The songs here are most appropriate for kids ages 2 through 7. The songs are available on iTunes (link to all 3 albums here). You may find the albums a bit pricy -- about $27 for barely more than an hour of music -- so you'll probably want to try a few samples and start off with one of the albums (one of the latter two) before taking the plunge for all three. While the albums don't quite match the (too high) expectations I had for them, Tom Gomez's scores for Shoe Baby, Flyaway Katie, and Penguin feature simple, gentle and occasionally beautiful songs your family would enjoy listening to even if they've never seen the shows that accompany this music. They make me want to rewrite that e-mail to Long Nose to say, "When's your US tour starting?," and that's praise for the music in and of itself. Recommended, especially Flyaway Katie and Penguin. Disclosure: I received electronic copies of the albums for possible review.