Review: Mind of My Own - Frances England

MindOfMyOwn.JPGWhatever daydreams I had of becoming a rock star when I was a young turk have long since faded away. But I have wondered about recording some basic, traditional songs for my kids, if only for them to have a record of the songs we sang when they were kids. And then there's Frances England, who has gone from recording the fine Fascinating Creatures as a DIY project for a preschool fundraiser almost five years ago to recording her third album Mind of My Own with kindie uber-producer Tor Hyams and getting Mates of State to sing with her on her Topspin-approved album. Those are pretty good rockstar daydreams. One of the key charms of England's first two albums was the lo-fi intimacy England achieved that fit her folky sound. But if on those albums she was willing to make the recordings be akin to a secret shared between friends, on the new album she's a proud 4-year-old, sharing the news with all the world. The good news is that she's done that without sacrificing the charm of those first albums. She mixes both straight-ahead Americana pop-rockers, such as the title (and leadoff) track and "Jacques Cousteau" and laid-back folktunes such as "Red Balloon." England's songwriting is much stronger, with more hooks while finding more similes and getting to the heart of the song in as many words as it needs, and no more. The songs tend to be more about feelings and friendships than concrete events of childhood -- no songs about learning to brush one's teeth here. Sonically, England's band and numerous guest performers (such as the Jellydots' Doug Snyder) perform admirably. Hyams gives the recording a warm, clear sound and brings out musical textures (the violin in "Do You Hear the Birds Singing?," the whistling and bike bells on "Bicycle") to keep the songs sounding fresh. And that song with Mates of State ("Place in Your Heart")? Every bit as awesome as you'd expect. The album is most appropriate for kids ages 3 through 7. You can listen to the entire 37-minute album using the widget below. (And, yeah, the artwork is still England's handiwork and is quite lovely to look at.) In my review of Fascinating Creatures, I said that I didn't think the CD or Frances England would stay secret for long, and that has proven to be an accurate prediction. Even better, she's gotten better as she's become well-known. She still has a sound all her own, while making room for an increasing number of friends. With Mind of My Own, Frances England makes clear her family music career is no daydream -- it's here, and that's a good thing. Highly recommended.
Disclosure note: I was given a copy of the album for possible review.

Itty-Bitty Review: Playing Out (Songs for Children and Robots) - The Crayonettes

PlayingOut.pngI think we can agree that England -- the entire United Kingdom, actually -- has not carried its weight in the kids music new wave. Few artists have attracted any attention here in the States, and even those artists would admit that the independent family music scene is as small there as it is large on this side of the Atlantic Ocean. Into the breach comes the Crayonettes' Playing Out (Songs for Children and Robots). The Crayonettes are a new project from singer-songwriter Kathryn Williams, who actually has a little experience in the genre having contributed a track to the Colours Are Brighter 2006 kid-comp, and Anna Spencer, formerly of the punk band Delicate Vomit. Although the album's overall sound won't be too surprising to regular readers of this website, used to hearing all sorts of songs for all sorts of kids, its folk-electronica music and some out-of-left-field lyrics aren't entirely typical of the more polished kindie sound. "Robots in the Rain" leads off the album with drum tracks, bleeps and bloops, and a mellow song about rusty robots. "Disco Teeth" channels "Odelay"-era Beck to offer this pearl of wisdom: "Toothpaste / Toothpaste is great / 'Cause it cleans your teeth / Disco bright." My favorite tracks are "Emergency," which effectively uses the whah-whah-whah of emergency vehicles as a musical motif and "Illegal," which combines a little trip-hop with a snaky violin and various prohibitions ("Don't pour lemonade in the fishbowl / Don't take the fish for a walk"). I also liked "Spooky Way Home," which is just scary enough for a 4-year-old at Halloween. Having said that, some of the songs don't sound polished enough and sometimes the lyrics are a little too precious (I'm thinking here about "Sweet on the Floor," about not eating, well sweets on the floor). The 30-minute album will be most appreciated by kids ages 2 through 6. You can listen to samples at the UK iTunes page for the album, or listen to "Disco Teeth" here, "Robots in the Rain" at the One Little Indian Facebook page, and an outtake for the price of an e-mail. The Crayonettes' mere existence shows there's hope yet for the UK family music scene. While it's not a perfect disk by any means, Playing Out (Songs for Children and Robots) has a number of tracks suitable for dancing, lounging or being creative to. Recommended for families who are fans of Kimya Dawson's Alphabutt and (to a lesser extent) Saint Etienne's Up the Wooden Hills EP, and for any family willing to be more adventurous in their musical selections.

Review: "Kids" - Keller Williams

Kids.jpgUpon first report, Keller Williams' eagerly anticipated debut album for kids seems to reveal a paucity of imagination. A kids album titled Kids. Really? Can't we get something with a little more creativity from someone dipping their toes into the family music pond? But then you inspect the thing, and listen to it, and those frustrations melt away. The cover is a good indication of the humor tucked away inside. The "Kids," of course, are those cute-as-a-button... goats, a theme carried through to Williams' kids' website. That sly humor carries through to the music itself, such as on "Mama Tooted." ("It was one of [us] three," sings the narrator to his child, "I'm going to tell you who / It was Mama / Mama tooted / She may say that she did not and she is probably right / but I am going to blame it on Mama.") I particularly liked the gleeful way Williams leads a chorus in singing parts of "Good Advice" in Chinese. Many of the song lyrics include a somewhat exasperated parental narrator, which should definitely help rope in the adults in the audience. And animal husbandry isn't generally a kindie topic, but there it is (obliquely) in "My Neighbor is Happy Again." As for the music itself, Williams noted in an interview here that Jerry Garcia and David Grisman's Not For Kids Only, an album of folk and bluegrass tunes for families, was a particular inspiration. You can definitely hear that on songs like "Grandma's Feather Bed" (written by Jim Connor a number of years ago) and Williams' own "Lucy Lawcy" and "Taking a Bath." But whereas that earlier album has a gentle vibe almost to the point of dozing off, Williams' mixture of more modern sounds, such as with the tape-looping on "Hula Hoop to da Loop" and "Soakie Von Soakerman," keeps the listener more engaged. Kids ages 3 through 7 will most enjoy the album, which you can hear samples of here. Kids is an album that could've been made for all the wrong reasons, but was definitely made for all the right ones -- music-making with family, retaining a sense of playfulness, not giving up the musical skills that drew fans to Keller Williams in the first place. It's a solid album, and families with a sense of humor will find much to groove to here. Recommended. Disclosure: I was provided a copy of the album for possible review. I also world-premiered a track off the album.

Review: Piñata Party - Moona Luna

PinataParty.jpgOver the past couple years, I've received a number of Spanish-language kindie albums. I've wanted to like them, I really have, but found that very few were worth spinning for the music alone. Whatever pedagogical value they may have had -- and most of them were designed to teach Spanish -- most were musically unremarkable. Albums from Dan Zanes and Mariana Iranzi -- albums that incidentally weren't designed to teach Spanish -- were the exception. Of course there are classic albums from Suni Paz and José-Luis Orozco, but they are far more traditional in their sound. So I greeted the news of Moona Luna with anticipation -- the Latin-alternative band Pistolera led by Sandra Velásquez, daylighting as a family rock band? Yes, please (or, in the lingua franca of this review, si, por favor!) So while it's difficult to create music that entertains while teaching, on their debut Piñata Party, Moona Luna are up to the challenge with songs that feature bilingual lyrics and preschool-focused subjects. "Tomorrow's Another Day (Mañana Es Otro Día)" has an poppy, earwormy chorus and features the accordion (a staple of a lot of Norteño and Tejano music generally as well as this album). My favorite track on the album, "Hay Que Trabajar (We All Have To Work)," in addition to being a zippy Mexican pop song, is the first song I've heard which explains the difference between working and playing and why both are important. And the track "¿Queires Bailar?," about a cow (la vaca) looking for a friend to dance with, is just a fun bounce-along song that does also work in several other animals and their Spanish names. A couple other shout-outs: Dan Zanes makes an appearance on "Brinca, Jump!," a song encouraging jumping on the bed. Also, their take on the classic "De Colores" rocks a lot more than most versions I've heard. Even if you've grown tired of hearing the song -- I have at least a half-dozen versions in my library -- I think you'll appreciate their more energetic take on the album, which is probably the closest to "rock" the album gets. If there's any downside here, it's that I think it could easily be more Latin/Mexican in its sound and a little more complex lyrically. The weakest track, "Don't Ever Give Up," is the most English-based track on the album and doesn't get much beyond the titular platitude. I'm not suggesting that the next Moona Luna album should go all Los Tigres del Norte on us and features narcocorridos, and their songs are more designed for preschoolers/kindergartners, but there were points when I felt like they were playing it a little safe. (Perhaps that's just a function of trying to write lyrics that need to work in two languages.) The album is most appropriate for kids ages 3 through 6. You can hear some of the songs using the widget below. The album, officially released next week, is an Amazon exclusive. I'm glad that Moona Luna's here, because I think they've got a chance to produce some really good songs and a little bit of cross-cultural understanding. In any language, Piñata Party is lots of fun. It's got bilingual pop-rock that stands up to repeated spins, and while the educational component isn't the focus, there's a fair amount of Spanish just waiting to be picked up. Yes, la vaca, I would like to dance! Recommended.
Disclosure: I was provided an advance copy for possible review -- a quote from me can be found on the album packaging.

Review Redux: Meet the Squeegees - The Squeegees

MeetTheSqueeGees.jpgThis is probably a Zooglobble first. I've double-dipped reviews before for albums getting re-releases, but this is essentially a triple-dip. It's for the LA band The Squeegees. Their album started out as an EP, then doubled in size and was released in February 2008. Now it's getting exclusive national distribution in Target starting tomorrow and I thought I'd pull up that 2008 review for your pleasure, plus offer a thought on the new track... ****** Meet The SqueeGees, the first full-length CD from the Los Angeles-area band The SqueeGees, could offer me a chance to be exceedingly lazy and simply copy the review from their debut EP, The SqueeGees. Well, maybe half the review. Because half of the CD was originally found on that debut EP. Now, that's not a bad thing, perhaps, because that means the bubbly tiny nugget of a song, "Apples Oranges & Peaches," is back, as is "Nala the Chihuahua," with its snaky melodic line and harmonies. And "The Ol' WWW," which really isn't a kids song (though it's totally kid-safe) is back to amuse the parents. Just as with the EP, the Squeegees are at their best when they're not as concerned with the point of the song, such as the dreamy "Bubbles." "I-D-E-A," a song encouraging more environmentally conscious thinking, almost overdoes it with the hitting-over-the-head. (More amusing is the Queen-esque breakdown that starts "So you think that you would like to drive a big car? / Have you seen the gas prices today?" and ends, of course, with "I like to ride my bicycle / I like to ride my bike...") In fact, what struck me the most on listening to the full-length CD is how much care and craft has gone into these tunes, musically speaking. The SqueeGees generally play folk-rock, but there's a lot of interesting bits squeezed in here, like in the song above, or the harmonies in "Nala the Chihuahua." Along with Samantha Tobey's clear voice, they make the most of the songs here. As for the Target re-release, even though the band itself seems to have gone through some changes (Tobey is still there, she's now joined by Rilo Kiley bassist Pierre de Reeder and Rich Sherwood), the album appears (and sounds) to be identical to the 2008 release except for the new track, "Tweet Tweet Tweet." No, it's not a song about Twitter (which would've made for a nice new verse on "The Ol' WWW"), but a song about birds, with a nice full sound. It's not worth getting the album for that one song alone, but it's definitely a pleasant addition. I'll peg the album as most appropriate for ages 2 through 7. You can hear some tracks from the CD at the band's Myspace page. There's a lot to recommend in Meet the SqueeGees. I like the quirky ones more than the standard ones, but that might be personal taste. In either case, there's a high attention to sonic detail that kids musicians thinking of recording debuts could do well to emulate. Recommended. Disclosure: I received a copy of the album for possible review.

Itty-Bitty Review: Wake Up, Clarinet! - Oran Etkin

WakeUpClarinet.jpgGive New York's Oran Etkin credit for this -- his early childhood music education program, Timbalooloo, sounds little like other music program for youngsters. A combination of jazz, world music, with interaction thrown into the mix, it's not necessarily better than other such programs -- I'll leave that for the pedagogic experts -- but it draws deep from wells that are lightly touched. The first album from the Timbalooloo program is Wake Up, Clarinet!, and after listening to the CD (and watching the 10 minutes of bonus video), I have a decent idea of the program's strength. Its core is classic jazz, played artfully by Etkin himself. As you'd expect from a jazz album, there's a lot of playful give-and-take between Etkin and the other performers, particularly vocalist Charenee Wade. There's also a lot of interactivity expected of the listeners, asking questions, giving the instruments characters through how the musicians play their instruments. (It's a touch of "Peter and the Wolf," I suppose.) If there's a downside, it's that the album's pretty short -- just 22 minutes long, including one song ("High Low") given two interpretations. After the first few times, I gladly would trade some of that and the introductions for ten minutes more of the band jamming on 3 or 4 different tracks. The album is most appropriate for kids ages 2 through 6. You can buy the album here, listen to the album here and watch the bonus video here. If Wake Up, Clarinet!'s brevity helps keep it from reaching the heights of all-time classic jazz-for-kids disks, it's still pretty good. I think Etkin's got the chops to be doing this for some time, and if he does, I fully expect his albums to reach that essential jazz for kids level -- maybe even essential, period. Recommended.