Laurie Berkner might just be the biggest superstar in kids' music. Plenty of artists can claim the hipster cred, a number of artists (or at least characters) certainly have the merchandising going on, but Berkner's the closest thing to a superstar (who's a real person) the genre has.
Which explains why I still feel the need to review a CD of hers that is, oh, 9 years old at this point. Victor Vito, Berkner's third album, was released in 1999, just about the time that the genre really started to come back. For some reason, it never became a staple in our household the way her first two CDs did, and I as I complete my Laurie Berkner review work here (for the time being), I went back to see if I could figure out why.
It's certainly not because there aren't good songs here. The title track is a stone-cold, know-it-from-the-first-spin classic. An earwormy tune, silly (but understandable) rhymes, it's one of those songs that you could retire happy knowing you just wrote that one song. But it's joined by a number of other great originals -- the simply lullaby "Moon Moon Moon," the stomp-encouraging "Boots," the quietly hysterical "The Goldfish," with its classic line, "Wait a minute, we're FISH!" Berkner also focuses somewhat on kids' feelings, as on "The Story of My Feelings" (natch) and "I'm Not Perfect." It's not easy to write songs like that which take a necessarily direct approach for preschoolers and have it not sound incredibly dull to adults, but Berkner succeeds. And Berkner's renditions of traditional songs such as "Froggie Went A-Courtin'" and "Zodiac" -- where the fat man is not from Calgary as Raffi suggested long ago, but from Tennessee -- show off her fine voice and simple but organic musical arrangements. (This may be the album that most closely shows off her debt to Raffi's path -- she is indeed a worthy successor to his mantle.)
If there's a downside to the album, is that it's too long. The album is exactly 60 minutes long, and it seems about twice as long as it needs to be. There are two pretty good 30-minute CDs (or one incredible one and one decent one) to be found here, but at an hour, there just aren't quite enough great songs or musical variety to sustain interest over the entire time. I also don't think it's quite as goofy as her first two CDs, which was one thing I always appreciated about them, but that's probably a personal taste thing.
As with Berkner's other albums, this one is targeted at kids ages 2 through 6. Samples of the tracks are all over the web. Tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of families have made Victor Vito a common part of their family's musical rotation. And while our family might not be among those, I'd be a fool not to recognize how many excellent songs can be found here. Definitely recommended.
Austin's Biscuit Brothers are best seen on TV or live. There's a definite theatrical sensibility in the episodes you can watch on selected PBS stations or on DVD, and they've been performing live even longer. (The live shows were the inspiration for the TV show, in fact.)
As good as those shows are, though, trying to capture the essential Biscuit nature on CD is a little tougher. Their previous disk, Old MacDonald's EIEI Radio, sounded a little bit like a (long) TV episode, with a little emphasis on the educational component of the TV show. It usually worked OK, but there were points where it seemed like there were some visuals missing and it wasn't as entertaining as watching the show.
Now, with their just-released Family Favorites, they're taking a slightly different approach, essentially forgoing attempts at direct education and an episodic structure, and putting together an album of fun songs, some of which were originally recorded for the TV show, some of which are new for this album. While the result is definitely not like the show in its overall structure, the album does a fine job of capturing the Biscuit Brothers spirit, energy, and humor.
The album starts off with a great version of the "Wabash Cannonball" -- its soaring chorus is a high point of the album -- and proceeds to wander through some time-tested tunes. Irving Berlin ("Alexander's Ragtime Band) and George M. Cohan ("Grand Old Flag" and "Yankee Doodle Scarecrow" -- OK, that last one has been modified a bit from the original) help the 20th century make an appearance, while "Old Dan Tucker" gets a smooth, polished performance from the band. Indeed, one of the pleasures of the CD is listening to the Brothers' fine voices and Allen Robertson's musical arrangements in song after song. And while the Biscuit Brothers' primary musical approach is renditions of folk songs, they're talented enough to make the alphabet song sound a bit like the Fifth Dimension on "Alphabet!"
And, yeah, Tiny Scarecrow, one of my favorite kids' show characters of all time (and one who gets high marks from my kids, too), gets his share of air time -- he's appropriately goofy on the "World's Shortest Dance Break," he negotiates the rapid-fire lyrics on "Tiger Rag" -- so that pleased me. In the let's-make-a-silly-rhyme "Schnitzelbank," he makes a Rene Magritte reference about floating apples -- high and low in the same song.
These songs are really an all-ages setlist, but given a couple of the titles, let's put the target range at kids ages 2 through 9. You can hear clips from the 34-minute album at its CDBaby page.
If you're already a Biscuit Brothers fan, you've probably picked up Family Favorites by now -- and if you haven't, you should. For those of you who aren't sure about the Brothers, I think this is a fun album you can enjoy even if you've never seen the show -- it's the best audio introduction to the Biscuit Brothers. Recommended.
I have come to think of Morgan Taylor, the creator of Gustafer Yellowgold, as the exemplar of the Kids New Wave, the term I have coined just now to encompass the genre and the artists responsible for its resurgence, especially in the past five years. A background in making music for adults, the unplanned shift into making music for kids, the occasional difficulty in figuring out where the distinction lies between the two -- the New York-based Taylor fits all of these categories. By no means is Taylor the only artist these apply to, but he's done a great job creating a musical path all his own, on his own terms.
Taylor's second foray into the world of Gustafer Yellowgold, the DVD/CD set Have You Never Been Yellow?, released this week, is every bit as wonderful as the debut Wide Wild World and shows that Taylor has a fabulous career ahead of him.
What distinguishes Taylor from many other talented kids' musicians is his visual artistic skills, which are obviously on prime display on the DVD. If you're not familiar with the Gustafer "animation," I can try to describe it, but it's easier to just show you. Here's the leadoff clip from the DVD/CD, "Pinecone Lovely"
As you can see, it's animated in only a minimal sense -- the camera pans and scans, zooms in and out, and various components of picture move around, and that's about it. But it's very absorbing to watch. Taylor does the drawings but does get some help with animation aspects. While the animation on Wide Wild World was fine, the pictures and animation here are crisper and sharper -- the difference is small but noticeable.
Of course, the animation could be done by Pixar and if the music (and images) were dull, you wouldn't care. Luckily, that isn't the case. As a group, I think the songs are stronger here than on the debut. "Pinecone Lovely," with its ode to nature ("Pinecone Lovely / To thee I sing") and sing-along chorus, I think finally fulfills the promise of the karaoke audio option that is once again present on the disk. "Beard For All Seasons" has a touch of Beatles to it while "The Bluebird Tree" gives Ralph Covert's "Hideaway" a run for its money for the title of "Best Song About Needing Time By Yourself." There are some tracks I think are only OK musically, but there's definitely no filler. Pop and power-pop, well-played, with some brass instruments providing some sonic boost, particularly on the closer, "Dream In Green."
And the images are strong, too. The aforementioned "Bluebird Tree" has some of the most stunning visuals (the title is literal) on the disk, while "The Mustard Slugs" pairs amusing images with the silly math story. And, yes, "Punching Cheese" is the sequel to Wide Wild World's "I Jump On Cake" and every bit as funny. In fact, the whole disk feels ever so slightly lighter than the original, if only because the videos here seem a little more like vignettes rather than part of a story (Wide Wild World has a slightly stronger narrative drive). That's neither good nor bad, just that if you're looking for something with a concrete beginning/middle/end, you'll be disappointed here.
I should also note that the DVD comes with, yes, an audio commentary. Morgan Taylor does the honors, of course, and it's definitely worth a listen for an adult Gustafer fan (or older child with the patience to listen to someone talking over the music for 30 minutes). Finding out which Steve Martin movie helped inspire "Aye, Aphid" or which '70s band "Dream In Green" apes was a cool bonus. Repeating spins probably aren't necessary, but it's worth at least one run-through.
Kids ages 2 through 7 are most likely to enjoy the animation (and songs) here. In addition to "Pinecone Lovely," you can also watch the clip for "Birds" here. (Gustafer's two YouTube pages are here and here.) Or listen to "Beard for All Seasons" and "The Mustard Slugs" at his Myspace page. For being from the sun, Gustafer's adapted quickly to our modern technological modes of communication, no?
Gustafer Yellowgold's Have You Never Been Yellow? is a fabulous DVD/CD set. Taylor has a gift for memorable images both visual and musical and I'm looking forward to many more images from him in the years to come. This set is highly recommended.
May as well get it out of the way -- yes, it's that Meredith Brooks.
But a decade after that big hit (and what seems like a lifetime ago) Meredith Brooks has released a kids album, If I Could Be... that is 100% kid-safe. The album has been out there since last year but got its formal release late last month. It's a sugary pop blend that might surprise those listeners who, like me, might have expected a slightly more rock approach based on our memory of that one song. (And who might not have followed Brooks as she continued to write and record over the past decade.)
Because Brooks is a parent of a preschool-aged son, it's not surprising that the tracks are primarily geared lyrically at that age group. Brooks succeeds best when she simplifies the lyrics -- "Dance, Shake, Wiggle!" spends a good 50% of the song repeating those words in the album's most infectious chorus. It will be difficult for kids to resist that one. "What's Your Name?" has a fun chorus, too, with lyrics designed for kids to shout their name.
If there's something that keeps Brooks from kicking Laurie Berkner off her perch at the top of the preschool musician pile, it's the lyrics. Brooks has a tendency to be too wordy for preschoolers, I think, sometimes forcing a line for the sake of a rhyme. Sometimes I felt she was writing for 3-year-olds using lyrics a 6-year-old would understand. "In My Chair" is an exception -- the more I listen to it, I think it's a very well-crafted song, though the line "I love my chair / And it loves me" cracks me up every time I hear it. (Y'know, it's not so unreasonable to think a preschooler might think of a chair in that way.) Regardless of my quibbles with lyrics, the music here is well-produced -- it's high-quality pop music, a step above the person-with-a-guitar-or-bad-keyboard production of a lot of music for this age.
I think the music here will be of most interest to kids ages 2 through 5. You can hear samples from the 38-minute album at its CDBaby page. For those of you looking for a rock-guitar-focused album, you will probably be disappointed by the CD. But this is a decent album of pop tunes with a number of fun cuts. Perhaps as Brooks' son grows up and Brooks experiences some not-so-easy times with her child, maybe we'll get another album with a harder edge. Recommended.
Though this is the best kids music album title (or at least most amusing to parents) since the Sippy Cups' "Electric Storyland," people who expect Dean Jones' Napper's Delight to be a traditional lullaby album or a goofy riff on a traditional lullaby album will be disappointed.
Surprise and, not infrequently, delight are more likely feelings here.
Jones is one of the ringleaders of the fabulous New York band Dog on Fleas. While it sells both this album and the band short, to call Napper's Delight a Dog on Fleas lullaby album is a good place to start in describing the CD. One of the chief attributes of a Dog on Fleas CD is its spirit of adventurousness, of lack of calculation in song selection and instrumentation. Such is the case here as well. There probably aren't many CDs that include both drum machines and traditional African instruments such as mbiras or the balafon, but they all appear here and neither of them really sound out of place.
I think it takes a few tracks to get into the CD -- the drum machine on the third track "Wheelin' and Dealin'" might not be everyone's cup of tea -- but by the time fellow New York musician Elizabeth Mitchell takes over the vocals on the fifth track, "Grow Little Flower," the CD has really started to establish a relaxed but not sleepy mood. The next track, "Bygones," struck me as a long-lost Vince Guaraldi Trio track, while the reworked 18th century folk song "Turtle Dove" gets a nice assist from fellow Dog on Fleas bandmate Debbie Lan and a couple fiddlers. By the time you get to "Hush Little Baby," which sounds like it's got a tiny calliope helping to provide musical accompaniment, you're sold. (I also adore "Filly and Dilly," a duet with Amy Poux which is a reworking of the traditional "Lavender's Blue.") The overall effect is definitely not one of a lullaby album, if only because many of the songs don't deal with unconditional love as many lullabies do. Rather, the CD creates a mellow mood that will work well as the soundtrack to many a lazy afternoon reading with the kids.
The 42-minute CD is fine for all ages, of course, but I think kids ages 2 through 8 will respond to it more. You can hear samples at the album's CDBaby page.
Napper's Delight isn't a traditional lullaby album -- it sounds nothing like it. Although it has echoes of Dog on Fleas, Elizabeth Mitchell, and the Innocence Mission, it doesn't really sound much like those, either. It is, as I said above, filled with surprises and delights. I'm not sure kids will necessarily run to pull this off the shelves. But I think a lot of parents (especially those who are regular readers here) will find this a soothing balm for family listening and, given five or six spins, will find this working its way into their brain. It did mine. Definitely recommended.
I play the violin and not the fiddle, so my bluegrass bona fides are slim. But I'm familiar with Del McCoury, who's been making bluegrass music for a long time, and making music with his sons for a couple decades or more.
No, Del does not have a son named "Little Mo'" -- that's just a fancy moniker for one of his sons, Ronnie McCoury, who essentially leads the Del McCoury Band through a kid-friendly bluegrass album. They're billing this self-titled Little Mo' McCoury album, released this week, as the first all-bluegrass album for kids, which it pretty much is, though there are other albums that come close to the mark (Phil Rosenthal's Folksongs & Bluegrass For Children collection, Grisman and Garcia's Not For Kids Only, which McCoury cites as an inspiration).
The album could have been an excuse to run through traditional kids' songs in a bluegrass style -- think something like Pickin' On Raffi -- but thankfully McCoury and his band avoid the cliches and provide a nice introduction to bluegrass. In fact, the strongest tracks here are the ones most kids and many listeners, including this one, will be unfamiliar with. "Barefoot Nellie" is an instrumental showpiece, guaranteed to get all but the most somnolent kids hopping. "Mama's Blues" features some great banjo picking from Ronnie's brother Rob in which the instrument takes the place -- and the voice -- of a young child.
Most of the rest of the album also works well. There are solid renditions of old standbys "The Fox" and "Teddy Bears' Picnic," which will be familiar to a number of listeners, and McCoury's original "My Friend, My Guitar," co-written with his wife Allison, is a decent song which also illustrates how to play a G-run guitar lick. I can't say that their takes on Randy Newman's Toy Story song "You've Got a Friend in Me" or the traditional "Big Rock Candy Newman" were revelatory -- I'm too used to other versions, perhaps -- and a few other songs left me with a similar "that's nice, what's next" feeling, but the playing throughout is expert.
Given the songs covered here, kids ages 2 through 7 are most likely to enjoy the CD, though this is more of an all-ages set than many. You can hear clips from the 49-minute CD all over the internet, but you might want to check out their Myspace page for four cuts, or my most recent NPR appearance to play the energetic "Barefoot Nellie."
There is nothing revolutionary about Little Mo' McCoury, it's simply a nice mixture of well-played kid-focused and kid-friendly bluegrass tunes that will serve as a decent introduction to the bluegrass genre. It's another sign that hopefully the kids music genre is maturing a little bit and expanding beyond the folk and pop-rock that has been its bread and butter up to now. Recommended.
Laurie Berkner might just be the biggest superstar in kids' music. Plenty of artists can claim the hipster cred, a number of artists (or at least characters) certainly have the merchandising going on, but Berkner's the closest thing to a superstar (who's a real person) the genre has.
Which explains why I still feel the need to review a CD of hers that is, oh, 9 years old at this point. Victor Vito, Berkner's third album, was released in 1999, just about the time that the genre really started to come back. For some reason, it never became a staple in our household the way her first two CDs did, and I as I complete my Laurie Berkner review work here (for the time being), I went back to see if I could figure out why.
It's certainly not because there aren't good songs here. The title track is a stone-cold, know-it-from-the-first-spin classic. An earwormy tune, silly (but understandable) rhymes, it's one of those songs that you could retire happy knowing you just wrote that one song. But it's joined by a number of other great originals -- the simply lullaby "Moon Moon Moon," the stomp-encouraging "Boots," the quietly hysterical "The Goldfish," with its classic line, "Wait a minute, we're FISH!" Berkner also focuses somewhat on kids' feelings, as on "The Story of My Feelings" (natch) and "I'm Not Perfect." It's not easy to write songs like that which take a necessarily direct approach for preschoolers and have it not sound incredibly dull to adults, but Berkner succeeds. And Berkner's renditions of traditional songs such as "Froggie Went A-Courtin'" and "Zodiac" -- where the fat man is not from Calgary as Raffi suggested long ago, but from Tennessee -- show off her fine voice and simple but organic musical arrangements. (This may be the album that most closely shows off her debt to Raffi's path -- she is indeed a worthy successor to his mantle.)
If there's a downside to the album, is that it's too long. The album is exactly 60 minutes long, and it seems about twice as long as it needs to be. There are two pretty good 30-minute CDs (or one incredible one and one decent one) to be found here, but at an hour, there just aren't quite enough great songs or musical variety to sustain interest over the entire time. I also don't think it's quite as goofy as her first two CDs, which was one thing I always appreciated about them, but that's probably a personal taste thing.
As with Berkner's other albums, this one is targeted at kids ages 2 through 6. Samples of the tracks are all over the web. Tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of families have made Victor Vito a common part of their family's musical rotation. And while our family might not be among those, I'd be a fool not to recognize how many excellent songs can be found here. Definitely recommended.
Austin's 
I have come to think of Morgan Taylor, the creator of 
May as well get it out of the way -- yes, it's 
Though this is the best kids music album title (or at least most amusing to parents) since the Sippy Cups' "Electric Storyland," people who expect Dean Jones' Napper's Delight to be a traditional lullaby album or a goofy riff on a traditional lullaby album will be disappointed.
Surprise and, not infrequently, delight are more likely feelings here.
Jones is one of the ringleaders of the fabulous New York band 
I play the violin and not the fiddle, so my bluegrass bona fides are slim. But I'm familiar with Del McCoury, who's been making bluegrass music for a long time, and making music with his sons for a couple decades or more.
No, Del does not have a son named "Little Mo'" -- that's just a fancy moniker for one of his sons, Ronnie McCoury, who essentially leads the Del McCoury Band through a kid-friendly bluegrass album. They're billing this self-titled Little Mo' McCoury album, released this week, as the first all-bluegrass album for kids, which it pretty much is, though there are other albums that come close to the mark (Phil Rosenthal's Folksongs & Bluegrass For Children collection, Grisman and Garcia's Not For Kids Only, which McCoury cites as an inspiration).
The album could have been an excuse to run through traditional kids' songs in a bluegrass style -- think something like Pickin' On Raffi -- but thankfully McCoury and his band avoid the cliches and provide a nice introduction to bluegrass. In fact, the strongest tracks here are the ones most kids and many listeners, including this one, will be unfamiliar with. "Barefoot Nellie" is an instrumental showpiece, guaranteed to get all but the most somnolent kids hopping. "Mama's Blues" features some great banjo picking from Ronnie's brother Rob in which the instrument takes the place -- and the voice -- of a young child.
Most of the rest of the album also works well. There are solid renditions of old standbys "The Fox" and "Teddy Bears' Picnic," which will be familiar to a number of listeners, and McCoury's original "My Friend, My Guitar," co-written with his wife Allison, is a decent song which also illustrates how to play a G-run guitar lick. I can't say that their takes on Randy Newman's Toy Story song "You've Got a Friend in Me" or the traditional "Big Rock Candy Newman" were revelatory -- I'm too used to other versions, perhaps -- and a few other songs left me with a similar "that's nice, what's next" feeling, but the playing throughout is expert.
Given the songs covered here, kids ages 2 through 7 are most likely to enjoy the CD, though this is more of an all-ages set than many. You can hear clips from the 49-minute CD all over the internet, but you might want to check out their 
