Itty-Bitty Review: Bandwagon - Joanie Leeds and the Nightlights

The New York-based musician Joanie Leeds has spent the past few years gradually developing her career as a kindie musician.  She's picked up a band (the Nightlights), a fanbase outside New York, and on her latest album, Bandwagon , she takes some big strides toward finding her own voice in the kindieverse.

Those strides begin with Leeds' voice in particular.  Perhaps it has sounded this good on previous albums and I just was too dim to hear it, but on this album, you can hear just how versatile that voice is, on crunchy garage rock ("Are We There Yet?") or a slow bluesy number ("Use Your Words"), among other tracks.  Whether it's Leeds writing songs that use her voice to more varied effect or producer Dean Jones giving her voice the spotlight or some combination of the two, it pays off nicely.

I hear two Joanies on the album -- one is the Leeds willing to be goofy and write songs laser-targeted at the six-year-old in your life ("Back to School," "Helmet," "UFO"), the Joanie that's always been present on her records.  The other is the singer who writes very child-friendly pop songs (the gorgeous and winsome "Falling," "Little Cloud," and the rousing folk-pop of the title track featuring Rachel Loshak and the Okee Dokee Brothers' Justin Lansing).  This other singer also gets Jonatha Brooke to duet on "Family Tree."  While Leeds has never been solely goofy, this other songwriting approach gets more airtime than before, and I think it's a good thing.

The 41-minute album is most appropriate for kids ages 4 through 8.  You can listen to album clips here.   Bandwagon is my favorite Joanie Leeds album yet, and I get the feeling that the best is yet to come.  Recommended.

[Note: I was provided a copy of the album for possible review.] 

Review: Deep Sea Diver - Recess Monkey

Another summer, another Recess Monkey album.   No kindie band challenges the kids music reviewer as much as the Seattle trio: their amazing productivity (at least one album a year for the past eight years, plus a second one to be released later this year) and consistently high quality makes it difficult for humble reviewers like this one here to figure out how to say what is essentially the same thing ("this is really good -- you should get it") in new ways.  (No, I will not be writing this review in limerick form.)

All the qualities that have endeared Recess Monkey to thousands of families nationally from their Pacific Northwest perch are in ample display on their brand new album Deep Sea Diver . Humor (the wry look at those scavenging birds in the mellow Beatles-esque "Seagull" or the punny title of "Choral Reef"), kid-focused topics (disco-dancing with "Walkie Talkies" and complaining about being short in "Shrimp"), and, yes, hooks galore.

I mean, what did you expect on an album themed around the ocean and water -- of course  there would be hooks.  The catchiest tracks are front-loaded -- "Tambourine Submarine" is a pure pop hit, and the samba-tinged "The Deep End" will have you singing along with the chorus or dancing (if not both).  But there are some gems buried on side 2, as it were -- "Seagull" is a tiny gem of a portrait and the back-and-forth sonic touches on "Making Waves" neatly echo the song's subject.

Musically, Drew Holloway and Jack Forman sound as good as ever, with new drummer Korum Bischoff essentially introduced to the band's audience in track #2 "Fish Sticks" by showing off his ample chops.  Friends such as Johnny Bregar and Dean Jones pitch in, and after listening to the strings on "Stranded," somewhere Burt Bacharach is thinking maybe he should do a kids' album.

As with most RM albums, this one's pitched at kids ages 4 through 8.  You can listen to the whole 41-minute album here.

So here am I at the end of my review and I still don't know if these words are adequate to convey how great this band is.  I'll just leave you then with Deep Sea Diver  is really good - you should get it.  Highly recommended.

Review: Pleased to Meet You - Key Wilde & Mr. Clarke

My appreciation for Key Wilde & Mr. Clarke is long-standing and deep.  My review of Rise and Shine, their first album from early 2010, felt to me less like a review than a summary of everything ​the duo had done in the couple years or so leading up to the album.

And to some extent I feel a bit the same way about their brand-new second album, Pleased To Meet You​.  It's been more than 3 years in the making, obviously, but beyond that, some of this music ("Animal Alphabet", for example, or "Raised By Trolls" and "Chuckers") has made its way into the world during that time.  So when I say that this album feels familiar, I can't always tell if that's because it actually is​ familiar or because KWMC have tapped into some timeless country-punk attitude.

In that review of their debut, I called the band (they're a quartet now, with a handful of guest artists, including producer Dean Jones, joining in) a "mix of Johnny Cash, Johnny Rotten, and Johnny Appleseed."  Sometimes, as on the opening title track (whose structure as a counting song is disguised by the propulsive shuffling beat and the British born-Clarke's slight sneer of a voice), they mix them up on the same song.  "Raised By Trolls" has a killer surf-rock guitar line, but the next track, "Wander Round the World" is a sweet and earnest bluegrass ode to travel.

If anything, Wilde and Clarke's songwriting has become even weirder.  "Lazy Raisins" is a ska tune about some raisins doing nothing but lying in the sun (which makes sense, when you think about it).  "King of the Town" is a rocker about a kid who bemoans his inexplicable election as head of the city until he makes some very sensible rules.  That's followed by "Conversation," a mini-operatic rocker in the vein of the Who about a kid confused by the adult chatter at a party which features the line, "Please excuse me / I have to step outside / My bike is double-parked."  And as mystifying that song is, I have no idea what "Bigga Bagga" is about other than silly wordplay and shouting "Oi!" a lot (as a result, I think it'll be a big hit with Little Boy Blue).

Which isn't to say that they can't be tender and linear -- "Take Ten" is a roots-rocker with layered harmonies that happens to be about frustration and taking a break.  But kids will relate because it's willing to sound how kids (and, occasionally, adults)​ honestly feel -- "This is the stupidest planet in the entire universe / It's so dumb / It's not fair / I've had enough / And I just don't care / Count to ten / Start all over again."

The 45-minute album will be most appreciated by kids ages 3 through 8.  You can listen to the entire album here.​  And of course the physical product includes illustrator Wilde's character-filled illustrations of assorted animals and people.  (Visit the KWMC website for stories behind some of the surprising appearances on the album cover.)

If you've read this far, it shouldn't be any great surprise that I think Pleased To Meet You​ is fabulous, an energetic blend of Americana and punk, of empathy and third-grade snark.  Fans of Rise and Shine​ should snap this up immediately, and the rest of you shouldn't delay much, either.  Highly recommended.

Review: A Day in the Life of a Boogaleeboo - Lesley and the Flying Foxes

In early April I stumbled across Lesley Kernochan, a Colorado-based musician who around New Year's released her first album for families, A Day in the Life of a Boogaleeboo​.  I'd listened most of the songs on her website, and wanted to hear the whole thing through.  Like is often the case with artists who record for adults and then decide to make music for kids, I had this feeling -- mixed with fear, perhaps -- that she'd recorded this album without enough thought of how to get the album out to the kindie world at large and that it might land like the proverbial tree in the forest without a sound.

So let me start by saying that I'm utterly and unequivocally charmed by this ​album.  It's got a sense of wide-eyed wonder at and celebration of the human experience.  The album kicks off with a jazzy Broadway strut, "What Is The Purpose of My Eyebrows" (which she describes as "like two islands stranded in the middle of the sea which is my face"), complete with bassoon, flute, and bassoon.  "What's Gonna Happen Today?" is a gentle chamber pop tune featuring vibraphone that even gets a bit meta ("I didn't know / That I was gonna sing this song with you.").  And if that's all too lovey-dovey for you, the next song explains "The Cycle of Poo," which, yes, celebrates that even gross things "deserve a hearty toast."

So the album proceeds, with Kernochan tearing fearlessly through musical styles such as the gentle lullaby ("Good Morning Everything," which features some lovely vocalizing), '40s and '50s big-band ("Me"), and even beatboxing /hair-metal combo ("I Love To...").  And she's recruited an able set of guest musicians (the "Flying Foxes") to give her songs (even more) wings.  It's like a cabaret show for kids -- seriously, this needs to happen -- and the comparisons to artists like Regina Spektor and Nellie McKay in their wide-ranging musical approach are apropos.  (The closest kindie equivalent would probably be Lori Henriques.)  But I don't want you to get the impression it's showy all the time -- some of the best tracks here are the gentlest, like "Hugs Are Awesome" and "Thank You for Singing with Me," which employees a small chorus of kids to good effect.  

Kids ages 3 through ​8 will probably most enjoy the album.  You can listen to album tracks at Lesley's music page.

So in late April I was at Kindiefest and ​who should I meet while I was there but Kernochan herself.  I hadn't known she was going to attend when I reached out to her earlier in the month, but I was very happy to see her there because it was more proof she's taking the long view on making music for families and that A Day in the Life of a Boogaleeboo​ won't be the last we hear from her.  Welcome to the fold, Lesley.  It's a lovely and joyous debut, one I expect to be on my Top 10 album list for 2013.  Highly recommended.

[Disclosure: I was provided a copy of the album for possible review.]​

Review: When the World Was New - Dean Jones

There are more than a handful of kids music artists who, in their attempt to anchor their sound in the minds of potential listeners, describe their music in terms of other kids' musicians -- "[Band X] sounds like [Artist Y]."  [Ed.: OK, I'm to blame for that at a reviewer's level, too.]

Dean Jones has never tried to do that, and even if he had, I have no idea who he'd compare himself to, kindie-wise.  As ringleader of the band Dog On Fleas and two solo albums, Jones folds in dozens of instruments modern and ancient, styles jazzy and electronic, into songs that are so far away from subjects that make up the vast majority of most music targeted at kids that we call it "family music" because we have failed to invent another, more descriptive name.

Jones' third solo album, the recently-released When the World Was New​, for example, is 33 minutes of music "loosely looking at the evolution of us silly humans."  It features, among other things, the slow-jam waltz "Prehensile Grip," which wonders where we humans would have been without the ability to grasp things, and "Snail Mail," a funky ode to forgoing electronic mail for the purposes of interpersonal communication.  He's not afraid of tackling weightier subjects like war ("Peace in the Valley") and the meaning of an animal's life ("A Sparrow's Soul"), albeit obliquely.  This makes the album sound ponderous, which it's not -- it's jazzy and mysterious and generous and occasionally danceable.

​The album is most appropriate for kids ages 5 and up.  (Listen to a 5-song sampler here.)  When the World Was New is an intimate album inspired by big questions -- why are we here? what are we doing? where are we going to? -- but never feels like a boring textbook.  Instead, Jones' album is a series of (musical) essays that might prompt a few questions in the listeners' own minds, young and old.  Definitely recommended.

[Disclosure: I received a copy of the album for possible review.]​

Itty-Bitty Review: Underbirds - Underbirds

Kids music has seen a bunch of collaborations recently as kindie artists recognize strength in numbers, but most of those collaborations have been one-off pairings.​  Supergroup side projects? Not so much.

So for a couple guys obsessed with pop radio sounds of 25+ years ago, Todd McHatton and Morgan Taylor are pretty forward-thinking as their pairing Underbirds marks what might be the first ​kindie supergroup built for the long haul.

​Of course, "kindie supergroup" implies the music on their self-titled debut is music recorded specifically for kids, and there are times when that's not entirely clear.  Sure, songs like "Brilliance," whose narrator has clearly just mastered some talent, or "Here Comes My Friend," can be easily heard as kid-focused.  But few of these pop gems sound like they were crafted with your local 5-year-old front-of-mind.  Rather, they're songs about friendship and daring and love and (especially) nature that happen to be kid-friendly.  If you gave this disk to your friend who has kept his or copy of Matthew Sweet's Girlfriend​ ever since college [raises hand] and just said they'd probably enjoy this new album, they'd enjoy it free of the cultural baggage that comes with being an adult enjoying "kids music."

​At barely 25 minutes long, Underbirds​ is barely more than an EP, but it's filled with songs accessible to the entire family; it's probably most appropriate for kids ages 5 and up, lyrically.  (Listen to "Brilliance" here.)  Whether your kids are 4 or 14 (or you're a kid-at-heart 34-year-old), the pop-lover within you will find something to adore.  Here's hoping partnerships like Todd and Morgan's last.  Definitely recommended.