Itty-Bitty Review: Play! - Heidi Swedberg and the Sukey Jump Band

There is lots of interest in musicians who create new worlds and new songs for the youth of today (and tomorrow). But there is something to be said for making old songs sound new with verve and joy, and so I'm glad Heidi Swedberg and the Sukey Jump Band is there to take this path slightly-less traveled (at least traveled well) with their debut disk Play!. The Los Angeles-based Swedberg and her band run through a mostly familiar set of tunes -- at least to anyone who knows their Raffi from their Yanni -- but between Swedberg's ukulele and and her band's wide set of instruments (e.g., saw, glockenspiel, slide whistle) they provide new arrangements. (It's supposed to facilitate teaching ukulele, but the end result is something much more fulfilling.) The presence of a few kids (and kids at heart) singing along to songs like "Muffin Man or "Skip 2 My Shoo" make the album accessible for all, but the slightly ethereal takes on "Buckeye Jim" and the "Japanese Umbrella Song" put this in a league above your typical "20 Classic Children's Songs" collection. For the most part, this album is targeted at kids ages 2 through 7. To Swedberg's credit, though, she actively encourages families to sing along and helpfully provides ukulele chords (as an amateur ukulele player, this was super cool) and lyrics to help that cause along. (Listen to song clips here.) If Play! doesn't quite scale the heights of the original-old-songs-in-new-bottles-master Raffi, it comes a lot closer than most. More, please. Recommended.

Review: "Ranky Tanky" - Rani Arbo & daisy mayhem

This is a disk that's been sitting on my desk for awhile, and I've actually listened to it a fair amount since receiving it a few months back. I feel slightly bad about this, some sort of cognitive dissonance between the desire to tell folks about a good CD and my inability to, you know, tell folks about a good CD. The Connecticut-based band Rani Arbo & daisy mayhem has been making music stringband music for a good decade now, but Ranky Tanky is their first album specifically targeted at families. It's a big stew of songs familiar and not, "traditional" and "un." The first 4 songs -- Cat Stevens' "If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out," traditional tune "The Green Grass Grows All Around," the Meters' "They All Ask'd For You," and the pop novelty hit "Purple People Eater" -- illustrate the band's omniverous, genre-disregarding approach to music. They just find good songs and give them new life. In essence, while lots of artists talk about making music for families, relatively few of them have taken the Dan Zanes approach of making "age-desgregated" music truly expected to be listened to without irony filters. This album takes this path less-traveled. In the end, I think Arbo falls just a little short of Zanes, which is an admittedly high bar to reach. While the album maintains a genial vibe infused with warmth, there are times on the album where the jolt of a Father Goose or an out-of-left-field guest artist would have helped a bit. In true Zanes-ian fashion, the idea of an appropriate age range is a little odd with this disk, but think of it as being best for kids ages 3 and up. You can spin five of the tracks here and listen to clips at its CD Baby page. Ranky Tanky is one of those disks destined to be listened to long after the kids have grown out of their size 1 shoes. Fans of Dan Zanes and Elizabeth Mitchell will find the eclectic song choices and cozy arrangements to their families' liking. Though you were always sort of part of this family music world, we'll wish you a formal welcome, Rani -- hope you stick around for awhile. (It won't take me this long next time to tell folks.) Definitely recommended.

Review: Rock Paper Scissors - Dean Jones feat. the Felice Brothers

This is the noisiest kids' CD you'll hear all year. Dean Jones, musician with a dozen hats (including one as the ringleader of the wonderful folk/pop/jazz/whatever band Dog on Fleas), turns to a bunch of friends, primarily the Felice Brothers and Earmight, for his latest album Rock Paper Scissors. Unlike his first solo kids' disk, the lullaby(-ish) Napper's Delight, this new album is loud and sloppy and all over the place. (If the two albums are in the same place at the same time, they will explode, just as if you put matter and anti-matter together.) The opening track, "Hail! Hail! The Gang's All Here!" outdoes Dan Zanes and anybody else who's ever attempted to put a party group jam on record. You will not hear a better album-opener all year, and the album almost suffers from being unable to match that level of energy and raucous joy the rest of the disk, as if anything could. As the album proceeds, Jones and his pals move from the jazzy title track, the Jazz Age novelty track (in spirit, anyway) "Butterflies" to the sing-it-loud-and-proud midtempo "Sing Like a Sparrow." Jones pal Uncle Rock shows up to mug his way through the loudest song about snoring you'll ever hear "Roncando," while the band channels a little bit of the great band Morphine on "Poison Ivy." It moves through many emotions and many instruments (haven't seen "car-horn-o-phone" on an instrument list lately). While this isn't quite the folk/pop that Dog on Fleas mastered on When I Get Little, people who adored that album and didn't have quite the attachment to its follow-up Beautiful World will probably find this a worthy successor. Kids ages 4 through 8 may dig the album more so than kids of other ages, though kids ages 34 through 38 will enjoy it just as much. You can hear clips from the approximately 34-minute album here. So, yeah, Dean Jones throws in everything but the kitchen sink on Rock Paper Scissors, and then goes ahead and throws in the sink for good measure. Lots of kids albums describe themselves as a good party, but this album is the real deal. Definitely recommended.

Review: Sing With Me - Haley Bonar

One of the most welcome trends of the past decade, kids music-wise, is that artists who spend most of their time making music for adults don't have a problem occasionally making music for kids, joining the lucky group of folks for whom making music for families is a full-time gig. Often these albums appear at the midpoint of an artist's career -- think of They Might Be Giants, or Barenaked Ladies, or The Verve Pipe -- well after they've established themselves. But I think we've gotten to the point where up-and-coming artists -- potential Next Big Things -- feel like recording family music is a perfectly acceptable detour along the way. Ten years ago, would Haley Bonar have released her 5-song EP Sing With Me? Probably not. Which would've been a shame, because this is a beautiful 16 minutes of music. Bonar, a singer-songwriter from the Upper Midwest who now calls Portland, Oregon her home, has a sweet voice ever so slightly ragged around the edges. On Sing With Me, she uses that voice to good effect on songs like the album "Beautiful You," which fairly aches with joy. Lyrics like "Beautiful / Everyone is beautiful / And I think you're beautiful, too" might sound trite in the hands of lesser artists, but in Bonar's sparse arrangement becomes a thing of beauty. It's basically a muted version of "What a Wonderful World." That's followed up by the title track, which in its brazen exhortation to sing and use of the major scale in the chorus is a 21st century version of "Do Re Mi." Those two songs, the album's best, are followed by "I Wanna Be Like You," of which Bonar's mellow take may not interest too many kids. The slow waltz "For Sister" is a little bit like Dar Williams' "The Babysitter's Here" in that it's a celebration of love for a little sister that may be best understood by the adults listening, but isn't outside the comprehension level of a kindergartner (who might be close to the experience). The EP finishes up with "If I Had A Rainbow," which features lines such as "If I had a rainbow / that'd follow me wherever I'd go / Everybody'd like me / Because I'd be so colorful." It's a cheery way to end the album. The 16-minute album will be most enjoyed by kids ages 3 through 7. For the moment, you can only purchase the album at Bonar's store. I know that Bonar's on the way up in the world, and we're not likely to get another family album from her anytime soon. That's a shame, because I'm really taken by Sing With Me and I think you'll be, too. Good songwriting is always appreciated, regardless of whether you're 3 or 33. Definitely recommended.

Itty-Bitty Review: Banjos For Babes, Vol. 1 - Josh Turknett

First, let's get this out of the way -- Banjos For Babes is a lot better than its cover might lead you to think. While I admit that the 4-year-old daughter of Atlanta neurologist/banjo player Josh Turknett has more drawing skills than I, a casual viewer might be forgiven if they opened the disk with some trepidation. But once they get the disk into the CD player, they'll be fine, because this is a sweet and simple little collection of, well, songs for the youngest banjo fans. Nothing revolutionary here, just solid banjo playing, nice arrangements, and even an unfamiliar nugget or two. The leadoff track "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes" adds a few other body parts into the mix, while "Old Dan Tucker" takes a slightly more leisurely approach to the song than is commonly heard. And I really liked "Coke Oven March," a song whose origin Turknett traces back to a music box. If Turknett doesn't quite have Pete Seeger's golden voice -- and, really, who does? -- it's pretty good, and he does a good job making what is essentially a one-man affair seem much fuller. The song selections on the 42-minute album are most appropriate for kids ages 2 through 6, though the arrangements will have a broader appeal. You can listen to samples from the songs here or at the album's CDBaby page. Banjos For Babes is a well-crafted collection of folk takes on kids' classics, one worth checking out. Recommended.

Review: Rise and Shine - Key Wilde & Mr. Clarke

It's hard to review an album when in one sense you've been reviewing it for a couple years now. From the very beginning, the songs from Key Wilde and Mr. Clarke were so wonderful, so fun that I couldn't stop telling people when they'd added another one to their collection. And now, many many moons later, the final product is here, Rise and Shine, the duo's debut kids' album, and familiarity has not breeded contempt, but rather continued and even heightened endearment. The album kicks off with the earthy title track -- never did eating one's worms sound so appealing outside of the avian world -- and pulls you in with each successive track. "I Had a Little Dog" is a shambling country melody that notes almost as an afterthought one of the album's few attempts at a standard moral lesson ("can't be what you're not / so be proud of what you've got"), followed by the hardest rocking kids tune of the year, the awesome "Favorite Names". If you're not in love with this album by the fourth track ("Big Pet Pig," with Wilde's shouted counterpoints -- "Well he can take all the garbage you've got (WHAT YOU GOT?)" -- to Clarke's sung verses), then there's not much I can do for you. That track's followed by two subversions of traditional kids' tunes -- "John the Rabbit" adds a whole cast of mischievious supporting characters while "Rattling Can" is a nuclear (literally) re-envisioning of "Rattlin' Bog." If the rest of the album doesn't quite reach the heights of those first 6 tracks, well, it comes close, and who can blame them when he bar was set so high? (I do particularly like "18 Wheeler" and the dreamy formal album closer "Peekepoo.") The album's probably most appropriate for kids ages 3 through 7, though the sly humor underpinning the entire album broadens the age-appropriateness considerably. In its physical form, the album also comes with a lovely book/CD case drawn by Wilde, who's also an illustrator. You can hear the album here. So, yeah, the album's great -- a mix of Johnny Cash, Johnny Rotten, and Johnny Appleseed. Targeted at the kids, but with enough musical gifts to keep the parents happy through repeated listenings, Rise and Shine is already one of the year's best albums. I hope the follow-up comes out much, much faster. Highly recommended. Disclosure: I was provided with a copy of the record for possible review, not to mention the opportunity to stream the album for readers. Clearly I'm a big fan.