Itty-Bitty Review: Cave Baby - The Mudcakes

It's pretty easy to think of one kids music band from Australia, but once you get past the multicolored gents in the Wiggles, naming a second gets a lot harder if you're here in the Northern Hemisphere. But Australian Sherry Rich and American-born partner Rick Plant make the case for The Mudcakes being a perfectly acceptable alternative. The two of them lived in Nashville for a while and unsurprisingly their band's sound has a very rootsy, Americana vibe to it. Their second album Cave Baby ranges far along the gamut of Americana, from the shuffling train sound of "Baby's Gonna Crawl" to the roots rock of the title track (with excellent guitar work from Plant) even to a little polka on "Please Don't Polka the Baby." Their rendition of "Shortnin' Bread" might just be my favorite on record. The songs (mostly originals from Rich) are mostly geared at ages 2 through 6, but the melodies and arrangements will appeal to a broader range of folks. You can hear samples of tracks from the 40-minute album at its CDBaby page or a few tracks at their Myspace page. It might not reach the inspired heights of The Bottle Let Me Down or Session Americana's Table Top People Vol. 1 and 2, but Cave Baby will fit the bill for a sweet little set of Americana. Who would've thought the best kids Americana album in recent memory would come out of Australia? Recommended.

Review: Robbert Bobbert and the Bubble Machine (self-titled)

What do you get when you cross the Beach Boys with some fuzzed out guitars and synthesizers and mix in a tiny hint of Barney? Robbert Bobbert and the Bubble Machine, who last week released his debut CD on Little Monster Records. Robbert Bobbert is the brainchild of Robert Schneider, whose main job is as the ringleader for Apples in Stereo, an indie-pop band whose output melds '60s pop sounds with more modern textures. And for the Robbert Bobbert album, Schneider melds '60s pop sounds with more modern textures. Sometimes this works to great effect, such as on the synth-poppy "We R Super Heroes," one of the year's catchiest kids' songs. The raved-up "Hey Little Puppy" seems stolen from a lost Beach Boys kids album, while "Boom Boom" features lots of vocalizations (beat-boxing, "ba-ba-ba-da-da"s to no end) and is perfectly timed for a 2-minute dance break with your littlest ones. While the music here is for the most part pretty catchy, listeners who are used to lyrics that play to two audiences at once -- the kids and the adults -- will be a little disappointed. In many songs, the lyrics are no more sophisticated than that of, well, Barney. That's not necessarily a bad thing -- what's wrong with a 90-second song tackling one theme in direct terms for a 3-year-old? And for the most part the melodies and arrangements are superior to that of the purple dinosaur's. But the songs where they don't quite ring true (the rapping mouse on "Fee Fi Fo, Fee Fi Fum"; the stomping in "The Mighty, Mighty Elephant") may have the parents hitting fast-forward and wishing for slightly more advanced lyrics as on the mini-science lesson of "Gravity" or the elegant "The Tiny Sheep." Lyrically, the songs here will be of most interest to kids ages 2 through 5. The 23-minute album comes packaged with some sweet art from Todd Webb (Little Monster is definitely doing the most interesting physical album packaging of any of the labels dealing with kids music). If you want to listen to the album, it's embedded at the bottom of this post (after the jump if you're reading this on the main page). The Robbert Bobbert character is being developed into a TV show. Based on the evidence from Robbert Bobbert's debut CD, it could hit the sweet spot for a lot a preschoolers and not a few of their parents. The album's got a lot of undeniably catchy tracks, and Schneider's only going to get even better as a songwriter for kids. Recommended. (Reminder: Embedded song player after the jump.)

Review: The Welcome Table: Songs of Inspiration, Mystery, and Good Times - Dan Zanes and Friends

However you feel about Dan Zanes' music, it's hard to say that he hasn't managed to follow his muse in his career as family troubadour. Interspersed with excellent albums designed for the whole family, he recorded excellent albums covering songs from Carl Sandburg's American Songbag and sea tunes. And then he recorded an entire album in Spanish. Really, the fact that Zanes' latest album is a bunch of gospel and gospel-inspired tunes with the slightly ponderous title The Welcome Table: Songs of Inspiration, Mystery, and Good Times should come as no surprise to any long-term listener of Zanes' music. The biggest risk Zanes takes in recording this album is alienating a portion of his audience who will be disinterested in the Christian worldview. Or, rather, that's how it might appear to someone who hasn't heard the album. Because if there's one constant thread running through all of Zanes' albums it's a sense of tolerance and equality, and this album is no different. Yes, it's an album that mentions big-G God several repeatedly. And just as Nueva York! may not have been as easy for a listener to "get" if they didn't speak Spanish, if a listener doesn't speak the particular language of the gospel songs, they may find this album more difficult to grasp. (I personally had that problem with Nueva but don't really with this album.) But it's also an album that includes a Jewish song, readings of biblical passages in foreign languages, and several songs that don't mention a higher power at all. It is, in short, a Dan Zanes gospel album in every sense of the phrase. There are, as best I can tell, 5 previously-released songs here including the title track with the Blind Boys of Alabama, leaving 10 new songs for your listening pleasure. Lots of traditional gospel tunes reworked in Zanes' Americana/folk/rock style, with particular highlights being "Jesus on the Mainline," "Up Above My Head," and "Home In That Rock." I also really liked the Spanish hymn "Himno Guadalupano." They're all lots of fun -- mostly "good times" with only a little bit of "mystery" thrown in. But I'd be remiss if I didn't mention my favorite track here, the album closer "We've Been Down This Road Before," a song about working together through tough times that Woody Guthrie or Pete Seeger would be proud to have written. Once again, a Dan Zanes album makes a mockery of my insistence of putting age ranges on album reviews, but I think kids ages 5 and up will more easily grasp the social justice (or spiritual) messages here. You can listen to the songs at Zanes' page here. I should also note that the album is a benefit for the New Sanctuary Movement, an organization which "protects immigration workers and families from unjust deportation." Zanes' passion in his music has always been community -- our "common welfare as human beings," as Zanes puts it in his liner notes. The Welcome Table is another solid album in his musical argument in favor of community and equality. Even if you're not sure the album is for you, if you're a Dan Zanes fan, you're going to find it worth your time. Definitely recommended.

Review: Here I Am - Caspar Babypants (Chris Ballew)

One thought I had upon spinning Here I Am!, the upcoming first album from Caspar Babypants, the alter ego of Chris Ballew from the Presidents of the United States of America, was that it shouldn't be this easy for someone who spent a lot of years making music for adults to turn his or her attention to the kids music genre and turn out an album that sounds so good. And maybe it isn't easy. But it is good. Now, there's no such thing as an overnight success, and Caspar Babypants is no different. Ballew put together a compilation of kids songs for a Seattle-based organization way back in 2002 -- he's been doing this for awhile. But over that time he's expanded his repertoire and approach considerably. There are 22 tracks here, almost all of them with something special to recommend them, so I'll just touch on a handful. Ballew has done a good job finding traditional songs -- some, like "Three Blind Mice," are changed enough to keep them listenable after a couple spins ("Mice" gets a 60's London sounds makeover and additional lyrics in the spirit of the original.) Others, like "Billy Pringle," get rescued from obscurity and are given new life. Amidst the traditional songs, kids and folk, Ballew also mixes in some originals. Among my favorites are "Monkey River," an old song of Ballew's that he's recorded more than a dozen times and, lyrics tweaked slightly, is a hypnotic little family song. "Heard A Bird" is a great pop tune for 3-year-olds that could've been written 100 years ago. Production-wise, these simple songs get some small amount of ornamentation, but not much. There's a lot of keyboards, some guitar, the occasional tape loop, and a fair amount of "la la las" and "cheep cheeps." I'm a sucker for good "la la las." Ballew gets the occasional vocal assistance from Jen Wood and Fysah Thomas, but for the most part, it's just him and his instruments. If I have any complaint with the disk, it's that at 49 minutes, it feels just a little too long -- it might have been better to trim 6 or 7 tracks from the disk. This album will hold the most appeal to kids ages 2 through 7. You can hear (and download) several tracks from the album at the Caspar Babypants website. Now, I don't usually review albums ahead of their scheduled release date, and Here I Am! won't actually be available until February 14. But I think this album deserves an exception to that rule. It's just simple, organic kid-folk and pop. With his Caspar Babypants project, Chris Ballew might make a whole bunch of great CDs for the family -- this is the first of them. Highly recommended.

Itty-Bitty Review: Musical Farm - Biscuit Brothers

Austin's Biscuit Brothers are TV's greatest kids music secret. OK, Dusty and Buford Biscuit aren't a huge secret in Texas, but these guys deserve a larger stage. In the meantime, we'll content ourselves with another album from the Brothers, Musical Farm. Released last summer, it's another stellar collection of familiar and slightly less traditional songs with snazzy arrangements, along with some originals, all from the Brothers' Emmy-award-winning TV show. If you have the DVDs at home, you may find yourself a bit tired of some of the tracks ("'This Old Man' again?"), but they're all solid. I'm always a big fan of Tiny Scarecrow, and this album features our family's favorite TS track, the duet with Buttermilk Biscuit on "I Am Singing Softly," which manages to be simultaneously educational, hysterical, and sweet. (New to me, but also amusing, is Tiny's "Continental Tango.") As always, the production, singing, and playing are top-notch; as you might expect from folks who work on "Old MacDonald's Farm," Americana is the most commonly heard genre, but you can also hear some rock, Latin, ragtime, and organ-based pop-rock ("Polly Wolly Doodle"). The album is most appropriate for kids ages 3 through 7, though since these are mostly traditional tunes, that's pretty flexible. You can listen to soundclips here. While nothing's a substitute for their TV work, and the album will probably hold the most interest for fans of the show, Musical Farm is also a fine collection of tunes in their own right, no TV required. Recommended.

Review: More! More! More! - Bunny Clogs

It seems like kids music is the new "side project" for an increasing number of musicians. What better way to deflate expectations and clear out a little creative room than by deciding to create music for the elementary school set? I don't mean that negatively at all -- in fact, it's that "anything goes" approach that helps to make the genre vibrant. It's in that spirit that I'm calling Bunny Clogs, the kids music project from the Honeydogs' Adam Levy, a "side project" in the best sense. Now, Levy already has a side project -- the I-never-thought-I'd-be-typing-this-name-in-this-blog band "Hookers $ Blow" -- but Bunny Clogs' first album More! More! More! has been 5 years in the making, recorded with Levy's two daughters and a host of guests (and featuring some pretty cool album art from his son). So it reflects a fair amount of thought and craft. At its best, the album recalls the family-friendly community-celebrating vibe of Dan Zanes, such as on the midtempo "Midtown Greenway," which extols riding a bike through town and features Semisonic's John Munson on bass. "Song For Powderhorn" celebrates another part of Minneapolis (and benefits the local V.O.I.C.E. Music Saves Lives program doing work in the Powderhorn Park neighborhood). There are a lot of songs about food, with very little in the way of lessons (though there are some snuck in there). Sometimes the album is plain silly -- "Velveeta Girl and Squatsy" is a bunch of (danceable) nonsense while "3 Dogs and a Pancake" is a bunch of (not-entirely-danceable) nonsense. And sometimes the album marries the old (Woody Guthrie's "Car Car") into a new, strutting hand-clappable classic -- "Are We There Yet?," the best song on the album. Not every track is perfect -- I can't say that I ever need to hear the drum machine-aided "Butter" more than once a year at the most -- but Levy's use of a whole bunch of different styles and instrumentation (check out the middle eastern touches on "Pharaoh Pharouk's Phyrst Phood Phyramid") makes even less compelling songs more fun to listen than most kids songs. The album is most appropriate for kids ages 4 through 10. You can hear tracks at Bunny Clogs' Myspace page, or also pick it up at eMusic or Lala. More! More! More! is clearly a labor of love for Adam Levy. It wasn't recorded to cash in on the kids music scene, it was created for the fun of it. Families who listen to the album with the same sense of joy that went into making it will get a kick out of this. Definitely recommended.