Artist: The Que Pastas
Album: Sunglasses
Age Range: 3 through 8
Description: The second album from the Que Pastas (and first full-length) tackles a fairly standard set of kid-appropriate topics -- the freedom of summer ("First Day of Summer"), summoning courage ("Gene the Brave"), and pirates ("Pirate from the Past"). Sometimes Gene Davis' vocals can be pretty talky (see "Sunglasses"), but some of the songs from Davis and band partner Simon Flory can legitimately be described as beautiful -- "Love" is a dorky and giddy celebration of the title emotion while album-closer "Hooray for Fall" features a chorus of kids and the most fleshed-out production on the album. (Davis' relocation to Austin from Denver helped no doubt in getting Salim Nourallah and Jim Vollentine (Spoon) to produce and engineer the album, which sounds good, but is mostly lo-fi in approach.) Listen to some tracks from the 27-minute here. Nothing revolutionary, but it's a decent set of songs, with a handful of very good ones making it worth the time to check out. Recommended.
