There are pitfalls in trying to be objective in reviewing music, especially in the close-knit world of kindie music, where if everybody doesn't know everybody (yet), the degrees of separation are small enough that it makes Kevin Bacon look like a loner. And while I deal with that constantly here, adding a layer of "good works" on top of it all, well, consider this then your grain of salt for the two albums discussed here.
First off is Austin's
Mr. Leebot, whose latest album
Erratic Schematic is fundraiser for an orphanage in Ethiopia from which Mr. Leebot (AKA Lee Davila) and his wife recently adopted two babies. As I've
previously mentioned, the idea of adoption is important to me, so I was predisposed to like this album from the get-go. While Mr. Leebot's sound -- think of him as DEVO's kids music side project -- may not be for everyone, he's started to ever-so-slightly fill out his sound (I like the New Wave sound of "Cleaning Theme"). As a whole, it's Leebot's best album yet. And the track at the heart of the album -- "Our Family" -- should be heard far and wide. (Listen to it
here -- just scroll down the page.)
The album is most appropriate for kids ages 3 through 7. You can listen to samples
here.
As for an album geared toward a slightly older crowd, how about
Hamlet? That's for high schoolers, right? Well ,
The Deedle Deedle Dees' Lloyd Miller would beg to differ, having helped his wife's second grade class to write a musical based on the play. Miller recruited Dog on Fleas' Dean Jones and a couple of the Dees to record the music along with kids in the class. The result,
Hamlet: The Album, is alternately rockin' ("Something's Rotten!") and pensive ("Tush, Tush") -- a little bit like the play itself, no? In best Fleas/Dees fashion, the album is ragged around the edges, the Band or the Stones mixed with a Shakespeare and Sesame Street. I'd much rather listen to these kids sing than any number of auto-tuned KidzBoppers.
The album will be most appreciated by kids ages 6 to 11. And if the story behind the album isn't appealing enough, perhaps you'll be heartened to hear that all profits from the album will go to Japan earthquake relief. Listen (or order the album) below.
While neither
Erratic Schematic nor
Hamlet: The Musical have a broad enough appeal for me to endorse the albums unreservedly for all listeners, both are solid enough albums to merit a listen even without the totally worthy backstories. I think a lot of readers will find a lot to like here. Give 'em a spin, maybe even your ducats. Recommended.
Disclosure: I received a copy of Erratic Schematic for possible review.
I've always thought of punk music as being pretty anti-authoritarian, which is why I've been surprised to see a lot of kids punk bands be, well, not anti-authoritarian in their music. I suppose it's not that surprising -- how could you sell your music to the very authoritarians (the parents) you're singing against? But I wonder how many parents see the punk outfits and hear the crunchy guitars and think, "not for my family." Pity.
The Seattle band The Not-Its! have always been on the "pop" end of the pop-punk spectrum. Rather than take a full-on punk approach, they sneak themselves into homes and audiences with snazzy color-coordinated tutus and ties and cartoon-friendly album covers. This summer they released their third album Tag, You're It! filled with songs about such dangerous topics as freeze tag ("Freeze Tag"), favorite subjects in school ("Mathematics"), and playing air guitar ("I Love Food"). I'm beginning to suspect that the Kindiependent bands have access to some eternal fountain of hooks that they parcel out to themselves, because this album's filled with catchy choruses and nifty melodic lines. (Lead singer Sarah Shannon's voice and the tight musical backup don't hurt in delivering the hooks.)
If there's a downside to the album, it's that it plays it too safe at points -- saying "Gotta Keep on Tryin'" is a lot better than most songs that tackle the topic of perserverance, for example, isn't saying much. I tended to prefer the slightly off-kilter tracks: the parent-child argument of "Carry Me," for example, will ring a bell with many parents who've gone, well, anywhere, ever with their kids. (And "Puppy Dog" nicks the bassline from Blondie's "Heart of Glass" to call out a poorly trained canine.)
The 31-minute album is most appropriate for kids ages 4 through 8. You can hear some of the tracks from the album at the band's music page. Tag, You're It! is a short, sharp blast of pop-punk goodness through and through. Safe enough for the kiddoes and the grandparents, regardless of whether they're into Joey Ramone or Vic Damone. Recommended.
OK, you have folks like Raffi and Ella Jenkins and Justin Roberts -- people who, once they started recording music for kids, showed little interest to breaking away from that and recording for adults. But there's a long history of "adult" artists dipping their toes into the world of kids' music -- Carole King, Johnny Cash, Harry Nilsson, Tony Bennett, all the way up through They Might Be Giants, Lisa Loeb, and Barenaked Ladies and every artist who's ever recorded a song for kids' music compilation. Some, like TMBG (or Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie long before them), spend a lot of time there, but usually the artists return to the world of checking for fake IDs and adult themes.
Which is what makes watching Chris Ballew, longtime 
The annoyance some parents feel upon hearing the classics of kids' music isn't due to the melodies themselves. The melodies, in fact, because they've survived for centuries in some cases, are some of the best ever. Parents' anger, rather, is a result of repetition and, sometimes, poor execution. The littlest things, like providing the barest minimum of interesting accompaniment and slightly different (but real) instrumention, can push the date of the inevitable "I can't take this anymore!" way out into the future.
So it is with The Littlest Star, the debut album from 
Oh, to have the energy of Pepito, the titular squirrel the latest EP of 
While David Weinstone has been incredibly successful licensing his Music for Aardvarks classes, he has not done a lot of recording for the general public.
Which is a little bit sad, because Weinstone is a pretty good songwriter. And on his latest album, All I Want!, he has a number of stellar songs. While some of the songs seem like they originated out of his MFA classes, many of the songs (for the most part, my favorites) sound like they were created outside of a class context. Like a number of artists, Weinstone attempts to cover a broad range of musical styles, from old-timey Dixieland ("I Want a Puppy!") to fuzzed-out Guided By Voices-style rock ("Mighty Milo") to a harmonica-accented waltz ("Beach Song"). "All I Want!" thrashes harder than any kids' song you'll all year, and probably most of the adult songs, too. Although the genre-hopping can be head-spinning, Weinstone's adept at all of it, while also channeling a bit of Barry Louis Polisar acerbic-kid humor (sample from "Better Keep Your Eye on Me!": "I like cell phones, they taste good / They're expensive, man they should.")
The album will be most appreciated by kids ages 3 through 6. You can listen to a few songs 
