Review: Full Moon, Full Moon - Papa Crow

Michigan-based musician Papa Crow zigs and zags.  His hushed, heartfelt debut Things That Roar was earnest, while the follow-up EP What Was That Sound? was… well, maybe it was heartfelt, too, but it was a heartfelt and fun album about flatulence, so I think you see my point about the zigging and zagging.

Having gotten toots out of his system -- so to speak -- Papa Crow (aka Jeff Krebs) returns to the warmth of his debut with his recent release Full Moon, Full Moon.  If the first album sounded a little bit like it was recorded in the middle of a Michigan winter, this new album has a sunnier, more expansive feeling, like it was recorded over the course of some long Michigan summer days with many friends.

"Moving to the Beat" is a gentle ska-tinged tune featuring organ and saxophone, while "Great White Pine" is straight-ahead bluegrass tune about camping.  If "I Wanna Rock & Roll" starts out softer than I'd expect a song titled that to begin, it ends with a suitably loud riff.  Krebs says the album loosely follows a day in the life of a child from sunup to sunup, so as you'd expect, a lot of the album's second half is mellower -- "Give Some, Get Some," featuring Frances England, is a highlight, as is the title track and "The Michigan Waltz," the latter written by Krebs' grandfather.

You can listen to 3 full songs from the 42-minute album (most appropriate for kids ages 3 through 8) here.  The album is made with evident care and craft, and will again appeal to families who are fans of Frances England, Elizabeth Mitchell, and Dan Zanes, artists who originally inspired Papa Crow.  This album which celebrates the outside world is a worthy successor to both of its predecessors -- more so the debut than the cheekier EP -- and worth checking out regardless of how well you know his music.  Definitely recommended.

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

Itty-Bitty Review: Year-Round Sounds - The Hipwaders

For a reviewer, the beauty of releasing an album loosely themed around different seasonal activities is that regardless of when one gets around to reviewing it, it's still timely.

So let's give it up for the Hipwaders' Year-Round Sounds and its opening track "Mic Check."  Yes, it's literally a song about a mic check -- a short, sharp power-pop song that at 61 seconds packs more hooks in than most songs three times its length -- and not about the new year.  But of course it's a perfect way to start out the year, er, album.  (Perhaps they can conclude their next album with a song called "Mic Drop.")  And if you're looking for another alternative take on the New Year, that's followed up by "Kings & Queens," all about babies and again a perfectly appropriate "start of the year" song.  Onward through the year, covering spring (a cover of "Peter Cottontail" and the swirly "Gaia She Knows"), school ("The Books I Like To Read" and "Smile About"), plus Halloween and Christmas (including an appropriately Bakersfield-y cover of Buck Owens' lost Christmas classic "A Very Merry Christmas").  

The album is most appropriate for kids 4 through 9.  At 14 tracks and 30 minutes in length, the album flies by and if your family doesn't dig one of the songs (or if it's July and and you have no interest in their appropriately Bakersfield-y cover of any Christmas song), another one's coming up shortly.  (Listen to samples via the player at the bottom of this page.)  While it's not quite the classic that the Hipwaders' last album, The Golden State, is, Year-Round Sounds still satisfies.  Fans of the Hipwaders, power-pop, or of noting celebrations big and small will find a lot to like here.  Definitely recommended.

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

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: 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.