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

Give 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.

Itty-Bitty Review: Kid Songs - Salteens

This is the year of the kids music EP, apparently. First Haley Bonar, then Lucky Diaz -- now Vancouver's Salteens complete the trifecta of excellent family EPs with Kid Songs. Most folks will probably come to Salteens via Yo Gabba Gabba! -- two of the songs have appeared on the show and another two were written and recorded for it as well. "I'm So Happy" is a giddy romp that will bring smiles to everyone, including and especially fans of The New Pornographers' throw-in-the-kitchen-sink arrangements. (Yes, there's an indie-pop formula at work, and I hope they don't lose it.) "Be Nice To Animals" lopes along sweetly, with just enough giddiness and over-the-top sincerity to make it listenable repeatedly. The band, recognizing the popularity of those two songs given their visibility, has shrewdly made those two songs only available via an $8 physical CD (which includes four other songs); if you just want the other four songs, you can get those digitally without those two songs for just $3.50. Those other four range from OK (the reflective "I Love My Cat") to pretty darn good ("All My Friends Are Different"). The purposefully emotional "Have a Nap Mom" is funny, but sounds out of place here with its wise beyond his years narrator and winking tone -- the rest of the album is so eager and earnest. The EP is most appropriate for kids ages 2 through 6. You can listen to (and from there buy) the 4 digital tracks below (or here), and listen here for "I'm So Happy" and here for "Be Nice To Animals." Salteens have successfully dipped their toes into the family music water with Kid Songs and the only question, really, is whether you should get the 4-song or the 6-song version. I vote 6-song version -- so fun and definitely recommended. Disclosure: I was provided a copy of the album by the band's press folks for possible review.

Itty-Bitty Review: Do Fun Stuff - Various Artists

Do Fun Stuff is hardly a new idea -- there's a long lineage of compilation albums featuring adult artists recording songs for the swing set, er, set, arguably starting with Free To Be You and Me more than 35 years ago. Even the indie rock genre has been part of the act (see: Yo Gabba Gabba!, See You On The Moon, Colours Are Brighter, Play, and three For The Kids albums, just for starters). This album, the brainchild of music blogger Ryan Marshall (Pacing the Panic Room), is a worthy new addition to the tradition, the equal of many of those collections. Marshall used to work in the music industry and still has friends there, such as the indie-pop band Rabbit!, who contribute 5 of the album's 13 songs. They're some of the best tracks, such as the uptempo leadoff "Pass It On," the rock ballad "Always a Blue Sky," and the lullabye closer ("Sleep," and natch). But the other artists pitch in nicely in a similar indie-pop vein. A few of the songs tell a story or have some greater moral (hate to spoil it for you, but in Davey Rocker's "Morton the Caterpillar," Morton ends up becoming a butterfly), but it mostly has a gentle springtime bouncy feel. The songs here are most appropriate for kids ages 2 through 7. (Spin the tunes in the widget below.) This digital-only release is also noteworthy in 2 other ways: 1) it managed, albeit briefly, to hit the #1 spot in the iTunes Children's Music store, which is pretty amazing for an indie release, and 2) more importantly, it's a benefit album for which 100% of the proceeds will go towards funding graduate students who will do additional research into the Smith Magenis Syndrome, a developmental disability (Marshall's stepson is diagnosed with SMS). Little of that would matter if the album wasn't good. But it is good, worth your time and money. Fans of those indie-rock-for-kids albums above will definitely enjoy Do Fun Stuff as well and even if you don't know your Frightened Rabbit from your Rabbit! methinks your family can still rock (and mellow) out to the songs here. Recommended.

Review Two-Fer: "Rock & Roll Playground" / "Jazz Playground" - Various Artists (Putumayo)

Ah, Putumayo Kids, you compiler and purveyor of music from around the world, you must be running out of themes, right? Rock & Roll Playground? Isn't there another region of the world you need to unearth some musical treasures from? What's next - Pop Playground? Hip-Hop Playground? (Actually, please get on that, stat.) Most regular readers have heard many of these tracks (or at least the artists), but credit Putumayo for having the sense to string 'em together in a happy-happy pop-rock mixtape with few if any duds. For example, Taj Mahal -> Dan Zanes -> Charity and the JAMband = win. (Or, Rhythm Child -> Rosie Flores -> Uncle Rock = win.) Best for kids ages 3 through 8 (samples here), you could probably put together your own 34-minute playlist, but why bother when they've already done the work for you? Recommended.

Having said all that, Jazz Playground is my favorite of all the Putumayo "Playground" series disks, and that's saying something. The nature of jazz is such that it covers lots of styles and permits fresh interpretations of songs we've heard dozens if not hundreds of times before, and as a result, there's a nice mix of new and old, providing new perspectives -- and isn't that one of the major points of the Putumayo concept anyway? The album deftly navigates the line between over-reliance on English language voices (which you can get anywhere) and non-English language songs (which can be hard for English speakers to fully appreciate, no matter how funky the liner notes are). Beyond that, it's just plain fun through and through, from Zooglobble favorite Lewis Franco & the Missing Cats doing his swing original "Stomp, Stomp" to Chris McKhool's fiddle-based take on "Spider-Man" to the Latin jazz of Jose Conde's "Cumbamba." And on down the line. Best for kids ages 2 through 8, the 31-minute album (again, samples here) goes onto my shortlist of essential jazz-for-kids albums. Definitely recommended.

Itty-Bitty Review: "The Best of The Laurie Berkner Band" - The Laurie Berkner Band

Why such a tiny review for such a big superstar as Laurie Berkner? Because it's a greatest hits disk, the future of which is somewhat in doubt in the mp3 era. After all, if your family are superfans, you'll get it just for the three new-to-CD tracks, including rerecordings of "Pig on Her Head" and "Moon Moon Moon," both previously seen on video, and the new track "Open Your Heart." (There's a deluxe edition as well, featuring four videos, including a previously-unreleased one for "Mouse in My Toolbox," which is similar in scope to Berkner's other Nick videos. You superfans will probably want that version.) The rest of you? You might just download the extra tracks from the album you don't have (there are no more than four from any particular album). But that obscures just how important a songwriter and performer Berkner is for the pre-K set. As a whole, it's a solidly constructed disk, with no major omissions -- I personally would've included more tracks from her debut Whaddaya Think of That?, but all the big tracks are here. And over the roughly 15 years or so Berkner's been performing for kids she's compiled a catalog of songs that would be the envy of just about any kids' musician. "We Are the Dinosaurs" is a stone-cold kids' classic, for example, one that works equally well performed live by a band and performed by your preschooler's teacher. "Moon Moon Moon" is the only lullaby written in the past hundred years that I actually sing to my kids. And "Victor Vito" is cheesy, dorky, and stuck in your brain for the next week now that I've mentioned it. And so on. While other artists slowly slide up to the 4-to-8-year-old age range, Berkner's continued to make music -- darn good music -- for preschoolers. So while I'm not sure many regular readers actually need The Best of The Laure Berkner Band! given the relative lack of new songs, as a collection of some of the best original music for preschoolers of the past twenty years, it's highly recommended. (Disclosure: I was provided a copy of the regular edition of the album for possible review.)

Itty-Bitty Review: The Monkey Dance: All the Kids Are Doin' It! - The Sweet Colleens

Based in the Twin Cities, The Sweet Colleens normally play Celtic-flavored roots music for adults, but they've branched out on The Monkey Dance: All the Kids Are Doin' It!, their first album for kids. It's a hodge-podge of styles, from the more rockin' title track and the especially fun Cajun'-tinged "No Beans, No Brownie" (the chorus soon to come to a home near you), to the more traditional "The Terrible Twos Step" and "Who's My Pretty Baby?" (Covering Woody Guthrie will usually earn you bonus points 'round these parts.) Though the Minneapolis Youth Chorus sounds great on a number of the tracks, they also sound a little out of place on the album -- I'd've rather heard the band tear through another traditional roots piece to get the kids dancin'. The album will be most appropriate for kids ages 2 through 7. You can hear a few of the songs from the 41-minute album at the band's new Myspace page. For a first kids' album, The Monkey Dance is pretty decent -- some fun tunes, good musicianship, and a willingness to get playful. I'm recommending this for fans of roots rock. And I think if the band decides to record their second album for families and figures out what they really want to do, look out -- it could be seriously good.