Itty-Bitty Review: Food! - Ben Tatar and the Tatar Tots

I'd like to think that I'm reasonably adventurous in my food tastes, eager to try to new foods from different cultures if they're offered to me.  But sometimes I'm perfectly pleased with comfort food -- macaroni and cheese, cheese crisps, a big bowl of cereal.

So it's with that metaphor in mind I offer up Food!, the debut EP from Chicago's Ben Tatar and the Tatar Tots.  Other than Tatar's willingness to dive deep back into the horn-accented sounds of the '70s, there's nothing particularly adventurous about the music here.  It's straight-ahead kid-pop with touches of Chicago (the band), ska, doo-wop, and Randy Newman.  And subject-wise, it's seven occasionally humorous songs about, well, food.  (And, not to put too fine a point on it, unadventurous foods like grape jam, chocolate milk, and pie.)

But like a good bowl of mac'n'cheese, when done right, this style of kids music can be very satisfying.  The multi-instrumentalist Tatar plays in a number of bands throughout Chicago, and the level of production is excellent, with Tatar handling a lot of duties, but also bringing in his friends to fill out the sound.  Standout tracks include "The Grape Jam," "Lemonade!," and "Piece of the Pie (Mama's Theme)," all designed to go down easy.

The 23-minute album will appeal most to kids ages 4 through 9.  (You can hear a couple samples here.)  Food! is a modest but well-crafted debut.  Unless you consume it too much, I guarantee no indigestion.  Definitely recommended.

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

Review: Raise Your Hand - The Not-Its

Like their fellow Seattle kindie musicians Recess Monkey and Caspar Babypants, The Not-Its have settled into a nice groove, delivering a new album consistently every 12 to 18 months since bounding onto the kindie scene in 2009.

And like Recess Monkey before them, the pop-punk quintet has begun to hone their songwriting skills so that by the time they got around to releasing Raise Your Hand, their fifth album, last summer, listeners could feel confident of hearing a nice little playlist of pop nuggets inside.

In that regard, the album does not disappoint.  "When I Fell (The Scab Song)" is power-pop punk at its finest, with the next track "Motorcycle Mom" just as ear-wormy.  And "Haircut" has that appropriately '80s hair-metal sheen for a song about a kid who just wants his (or her) hair to remain wild and untamed.  Even the songs that I was just fine with, a song "Funniest Cat Video" or the title track, inevitably have some sort of musical hook or distinctive production that make the song worth hearing.

As with many of their previous albums, there's a blend of earnestness and sophisticated attitude to the song lyrics -- "Funniest Cat Video" is about the narrator trying (and failing) to make a funny cat video for YouTube, while "Nose In a Book" is all about how awesome reading is.  The references in "Hey 80's" will go straight over the 6-year-old heads (and straight into their 38-year-old parents' heads), while songs like "Bee's Knees" and "Echo" tackle their subjects (bees' environmental fragility and love equality, respectively) with directness.  As an older listener, I wouldn't mind hearing the band tackle some of their more "serious" subjects with a little more of the irreverent attitude they display on their less serious subjects, but that could be the preference of the adult who has heard far more kids music than the vast majority of parents ever will.

Raise Your Hand is most appropriate for kids ages 4 through 9.  And as has become expected with Not-Its albums, the design, from Don Clark, is once again top-notch.  I realize that in the age of Spotify, album designers are probably an endangered species, even in the kids music world, but the CD ain't quite dead yet.  You can stream the entire album here.

As I hope I've made clear, Raise Your Hand is a solid collection of songs, radio-ready pop candy for the first-grade masses.  Families who are longtime fans won't be disappointed and while I might recommend its predecessor KidQuake! as the best introduction to the band, that's just personal preference as opposed to any demonstrative difference in quality.  The quality continues.  Definitely recommended.

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

Review: Love Bug - Raffi

There is no question that Raffi is kids music royalty, one of the first names lots of people probably think of when they hear the phrase "kids music."

But he's also been comparatively quiet in the past decade, at least in the kids music world, since the release of 2002's Let's Play.  Not quiet in the broader world, mind you -- he's the founder of the Centre for Child Honouring, and a prolific Twitterer -- but there's a whole decade's worth of preschoolers whose exposure to Raffi's lovely voice has been limited to older songs, starting with one of the foundational albums of kids music, 1976's Singable Songs for the Very Young.

So it was with some surprise that the world received news that the Canadian artist was going to release an album of brand-new recordings in 2014.  Sure enough, this summer he released Love Bug, and in many cases, it's like he never left.  Why now? Raffi says he "make[s] music when I feel a new stirring," and in this case it was feeling like he wanted to record music celebrating the natural and "real world." (Although an active Twitter user, Raffi uses a fair number of those tweets to suggest that kids should have far less of an online/electronic presence.)

There are parts of Love Bug that are absolutely among Raffi's best work (which, for the record, I find to be his first 3 albums, which have been played literally hundreds of times in our household).  The title song, with some kids singing along in parts? Classic.  Same goes for "Doggone Woods," which features the man who's sold millions of albums giving his best "woof!"  (There's something to be said for the idea that the reason Raffi has sold millions of albums is precisely because his empathy and understanding of kids allows him to bark on record.)  Songs like "Free To Play" and "In the Real World" teach lessons obliquely about, well, playing and exploring the real world (as opposed to online).  And as someone who's half-Canadian, I was glad to hear Raffi re-purpose Woody Guthrie's classic "This Land Is Your Land" for Canadian geography.

There are some songs that may frustrate some listeners -- "Mama Loves It" is more explicitly lesson-teaching, and the look I got from my wife after we listened to "Seeing the Heart" on a car ride spoke very clearly that she never wanted to hear Raffi sing about the "mother and son connection" ever again.  Ours is a Raffi household, and so I can accept the track "Wind Chimes," which is, simply, 1 minute and 22 seconds of wind chimes.  Others may not want to travel that path.

Technically, there are no great shifts compared to Raffi's past work.  The arrangements are gentle, non-obtrusive -- mostly piano and guitar-folk with mellow percussion that features Raffi's voice, as pristine as ever.  It doesn't sound like a kindie pop-rock record, and for that, we can be thankful.  The 43-minute album is probably best for kids 3 through 7 (and "Belugagrads," as Raffi has nicknamed his now-adult fans from his past, of all ages.)

I will say that I wanted to like this album even more than I did -- I wanted it to be every bit as perfect as I think Singable Songs is.  Other listeners may in fact think it is.  But it is good, very good, and every family who's had a place in their heart for Raffi in their lives will find lots of music here worth space in that heart as well.  Definitely recommended.

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

Review: Through the Woods - The Okee Dokee Brothers

There aren't many blockbuster albums in the world of kindie.  There are lots of albums that sell well, and lots of albums that achieve a level of critical popularity inside and outside the kindie world -- but something that combines parts, that's rare.

The Okee Dokee Brothers' Can You Canoe? was one of those rare albums.  It was critically acclaimed as the best album of 2012, winning the Grammy for best children's album of that year as well as taking the top spot in the Fids and Kamily Awards.  It also continued to be one of the few kindie albums (Non-Laurie Berkner/Elizabeth Mitchell/TMBG Division) to make Top 50 charts at iTunes and Amazon.

All of which is to say, Justin Lansing and Joe Mailander, those boys from Minnesota, had a mighty big task in following up that album. Did they succeed with Through the Woods: An Appalchian Adventure Album?

It's hard to say, precisely because of its predecessor's tremendous success. Are all the elements there? Yes -- a big-hearted spirit, a fancy for metaphor, tenderness leavened with humor, it's all there.  But I would be lying if I said I had the same instantaneous reaction to this new album as I did 2 years ago, and maybe the reason it's taken me 3 months to write this review is that I've been trying to figure out why.

The best answer I can come up with -- and it's not a great one, though it is an honest one -- is that it's mellower, its philosophy perhaps more inwardly focused.  Compared to Canoe, whose can-do attitude and celebration of exploration was front-and-center from the first note (my NPR review of the album is one my favorite pieces there and draws heavily on those themes), this new album, inspired by walks along the Appalchian Trail, generally sings in a more relaxed key.  The title track, featuring a lovely descending bass line, is the spiritual successor to the last album's title track, but most of the songs are more content to celebrate tiny moments -- dancing with neighbors in "Jamboree," the gentle love song "Evergreen," the ode to keeping things loose "Out of Tune."

The Brothers do a good job of reworking some well-known folk tunes like "Big Rock Candy Mountain" (featuring Hubby Jenkins from the Carolina Chocolate Drops) and "Hillbilly Willy," their version of "Old Dan Tucker."  Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer each make a separate appearance, with Marxer's banjo playing on "Fiddlestick Joe" of particular note. Dean Jones co-produces with Lansing and Mailander, and Jed Anderson with his usual light (and spot-on) touch.

The album will be most appropriate for kids ages 4 through 9.  The album packaging, featuring art from Brandon Reese, is lovely -- it's the sort of thing that warms this physical product fan's heart.  (There is also a DVD with music videos and footage from the trip.)

So, in sum, Through the Woods is an excellent album, one that should provide your family with hours of very pleasurable listening.  If you came to love the band because of Can You Canoe? then you will continue to love them no less after this new album.  And if you, like me, love this album a little bit less, it's OK, too -- it's still pretty great.  Highly recommended.

Itty-Bitty Review: We're a Club in the Woods - Bears and Lions

My introduction to the Florida-based duo Bears and Lions was at Kindiefest a couple years back, where a couple guys dressed up as, yes, a bear and a lion (in '70s era basketball uniforms, no less), strode up on stage and proceeded to play one of the more goofy sets of songs I'd heard in kids music.  Jangly, southern-fried guitar-pop songs about jumping out of airplanes, man's best friend, and PAN! CAKE! SWEEP! STAKES!  (Just listen to "Pancakes" all the way through, trust me.)

So a lot of my attitude regarding their 2014 debut, We're a Club in the Woods, is colored by the impressions their slightly anarchic set created.  They mostly played  uptempo songs during their abbreviated Kindiefest set, and the gleeful energy on tracks like "Pancakes," "Airplanes," and "Mediocre Kid" is every bit present here on the album.  Slightly less energetic songs like "Jeremiah" don't stand out nearly as much.  The album, when played live, is intended to be more a story, so the pogoing theme-song-like "Bears and Lions" makes more sense if you think of it as the song they play at the very end of the set after Bear and Lion have formed their own club in the woods.  It's not a perfect album by any means, but nobody would consider it cookie-cutter kindie-pop.

The 36-minute album is most appropriate for kids ages 4 through 8.  You can stream the album here.  We're a Club in the Woods is a little odd, but in a good way, and well worth checking out.  Definitely recommended.

Review: Laurie Berkner Lullabies - Laurie Berkner

When asked to name a Laurie Berkner song, most parents in the midst of the Berkner phase of their life would probably name "We Are the Dinosaurs" or "Pig on Her Head" or any of the peppy songs that I'm sure are still garnering lots of views on Sprout or Noggin or YouTube or wherever it is these the young turks are watching their music videos.

But Berkner's also written and perform some lovely lullabies over her kindie career.  For my money, "Moon Moon Moon" is one of the best songs she's written, period.  Given that she hadn't focused as much on slower nighttime songs, the decision to record Laurie Berkner Lullabies, her latest album, released earlier this summer, isn't that surprising.

Let's get the worst thing about the album out of the way -- the title.  I can deal with the awkwardness of the title (the grammatical pedant in me keeps wanting to rename it "Laurie Berkner's Lullabies"), but I should warn you that this is probably not the soothing album you'll listen to quietly as you feed your infant at 2 AM or something your preschooler listener will drift off to sleep to.  There are too many songs that are -- for a lullaby -- a bit too exuberant.  In other words, taken as a whole, this album may not always work to aid sleep.

But if you reframe your perspective, if you instead think of this as a "cool down" quiet time album with songs that reassure the young listener that they're sounded by love, then on that level the album succeeds admirably.  There are a number of new classic songs -- "Fireflies" most immediately comes to mind, but so does "A Lullaby" and "Stars Are Shining" -- that more closely approximate the more hushed tone I think of when the word "lullaby" comes to mind.  She covers classic lullabies "All Through the Night" and "Little Boy Blue" and "I Gave My Love a Cherry (The Riddle Song)," all well done (Berkner's daughter Lucy duets with her on the latter).

Berkner's desire to revisit some of her classic tracks yields mostly positive results -- "In the Clouds" has too much production value to be an adequate lullaby, but it undoubtedly sounds better than the 15+-year-old version on Berkner's debut album Buzz Buzz.  (I also like Berkner's duet with sometimes Laurie Berkner Band bassist Brady Rymer on a slightly simpler "Under a Shady Tree.")  I don't like how Berkner complicated the simplicity of the original track of "Moon Moon Moon," but I understand why she wanted to try her hand at a new version.  As always, Berkner's voice is a strength of the album, and she manages to avoid the overly precious approach that dooms a lot of lullaby album from repeat listening.

The 21-track 52-minute album will be most appropriate for kids ages 2 through 7.

I liked Laurie Berkner Lullabies quite a bit once I stopped insisting it be the perfect lullaby album.  Berkner fans (and kindie fans generally) will not be disappointed -- it's an album that lets Berkner stretch some other songwriting muscles and show her playfulness in a more relaxed set of songs.  Definitely recommended.

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