Itty-Bitty Review: How To Be a Cloud - Kira Willey

On her third kids music album How To Be a Cloud, Kira Willey continues, to my ears, to take tiny but graceful steps from the yoga-focused music that was the basis for her first album Dance for the Sun and second album Kings & Queens of the Forest.

All three albums feature a set of songs leading off the album, with a second series of tracks featuring most if not all of the tracks from the "front half," as it were, as the basis for a series of 2-to-3-minute pose cycles.  Whereas on the first album the yoga versions of the songs were obvious, on the new album, the songs are used more often as soft backgrounds for a series of yoga poses whose relationship to the song and the lyrics than obvious.

The thing is, the poppy songs stand perfectly well on their own.  Leadoff track "My Favorite Day" is a lighter-than-air confection with a surfeit of good feelings, with other tracks like "Gotta Lotta Happy" hitting the same beats.  My favorite track on the album might be "Jazzy," a celebration of a girl who loves to sing and dance through her day, which sprightly moves along.  Slower tracks like the title track and "When You Sleep" serve up nice counterpoints to the faster tracks.  Willey also reworks her big hit "Colors" with a 75-student kindergarten choir and it's every bit as charming (albeit in a different way) as the original, solo effort.

The album will be of most interest to kids ages 3 through 7.  You can listen to songs from the album here.  I don't mean to put down the yoga part of the CD -- after all, my first hook into Willey's music was, as occasional yoga practitioner, that yoga part.  But How To Be a Cloud shows that her music stands perfectly well on its own, no pose required.  Come for the yoga, perhaps, but stay for the music.  Recommended. 

Note: I was given a copy of this album for possible review.

Itty-Bitty Review: Food! - Ben Tatar and the Tatar Tots

I'd like to think that I'm reasonably adventurous in my food tastes, eager to try to new foods from different cultures if they're offered to me.  But sometimes I'm perfectly pleased with comfort food -- macaroni and cheese, cheese crisps, a big bowl of cereal.

So it's with that metaphor in mind I offer up Food!, the debut EP from Chicago's Ben Tatar and the Tatar Tots.  Other than Tatar's willingness to dive deep back into the horn-accented sounds of the '70s, there's nothing particularly adventurous about the music here.  It's straight-ahead kid-pop with touches of Chicago (the band), ska, doo-wop, and Randy Newman.  And subject-wise, it's seven occasionally humorous songs about, well, food.  (And, not to put too fine a point on it, unadventurous foods like grape jam, chocolate milk, and pie.)

But like a good bowl of mac'n'cheese, when done right, this style of kids music can be very satisfying.  The multi-instrumentalist Tatar plays in a number of bands throughout Chicago, and the level of production is excellent, with Tatar handling a lot of duties, but also bringing in his friends to fill out the sound.  Standout tracks include "The Grape Jam," "Lemonade!," and "Piece of the Pie (Mama's Theme)," all designed to go down easy.

The 23-minute album will appeal most to kids ages 4 through 9.  (You can hear a couple samples here.)  Food! is a modest but well-crafted debut.  Unless you consume it too much, I guarantee no indigestion.  Definitely recommended.

Note: I received a copy of this album for possible review.

Video: "HBD, Dude!" - Mista Cookie Jar & the Chocolate Chips (World Premiere)

Southern California's Mista Cookie Jar is testing my hyphenating abilities.  His blend of hip-hop, soul sounds, Motown riffs, California vibes, and whatever else he throws in the mix can be too much for the English language too handle.

For his latest track, "HBD, Dude!," MCJ and his Chocolate Chips mix a surf-rock guitar track and some flowing verses that include the word "hashtag" to produce a very 21st-century celebration of someone's birthday.  (You can buy the track via that link above, or iTunes and CD Baby as well...)

For the video, which I'm world-premiering here today, Mista Cookie Jar can't be contained to a single POV, either.  He takes Beach Blanket Bingo-era footage, hand-animates it a bit, and throws in a nice Facebook/Instagram reference or three.  Throw in some kids eating cake and surf-dancing, and you've got yourself a party.

I'm going with "surf-hop."

Mista Cookie Jar and the Chocolate Chips - "HBD, Dude!" [YouTube]

Interview Sandra Velasquez (Moona Luna)

Up above in the title for this interview, I've written "Moona Luna" after Sandra Velasquez, because if you're reading this website, you're probably most familiar with the New York-based Velasquez as the mastermind behind the bilingual Spanish kindie band.

But like many musicians, Velasquez wears a number of hats, and so it's just as likely that the intrepid Google-r will eventually find their way to this interview because they're fans of Velasquez's band Pistolera, the Spanish-language band she founded in 2005.

Or maybe you grooved to "Cheerleader," the leadoff single from SLV, the band featuring Velasquez and multi-instrumentalist Sean Dixon.

So there are a lot of reasons to listen to Velasquez, and I'm offering you one more -- the interview below, completed while Velasquez was on tour, and in which she talks about starting her musical life as a reluctant keyboardist, the impact of songwriting on her life, and the different audiences she plays to.

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Zooglobble: What are your first musical memories?

Sandra Velasquez: I was forced to play piano as a child. So my earliest musical memories of are being forced to practice and playing piano recitals in lace dresses.  I begged my parents to let me quit piano, which they did when I was 13. I bought my first electric guitar and started taking lessons immediately to learn all my favorite Nirvana, Hendrix, and other rock songs. Incidentally, the first band I played in when I was fifteen was as a keyboardist. We mostly practiced instead of gigging. Those were wonderful years because we were so naive in our freedom.

What inspired you to form Pistolera?

I moved to New York City the day after I graduated from music school in 1999 and spent that first summer completely in shock of the lack of Mexican and/or (more importantly) Chicano culture.  I always said that I had I stayed in California I would have just played in a rock band. I started Pistolera out of a longing for trucks driving by with accordion melodies blaring out of them, for taco shops with banda music leaking out of the kitchen. But of course being a rocker at heart, Pistolera was always a blend. Latin music with rock attitude. 

How did the birth of your daughter inspire Moona Luna?

I could have never started Moona Luna without my daughter. I would not have known what to write about! I am the kind of songwriter that writes from personal experiences. I can't make stuff up. 

What have you enjoyed about writing songs for Moona Luna as compared to writing them for Pistolera?  What has been more challenging?

Writing for Moona Luna has taught me that at the end of the day I am a songwriter. Not just a songwriter for Pistolera, or for one demographic. I enjoy writing songs. I'm addicted to melodies. Writing a good song can be challenging no matter who you are writing for. Some songs flow out easily and others you have to work on, put aside, and work on some more. I did find that giving myself a theme for the second Moona Luna album (Vamos, Let's Go!) helped me write.

Has your songwriting for families changed as your daughter has grown older?  As you've grown older?

Now that I have multiple bands I have found that the songwriting just changes with time regardless. There is a the perception that I as the songwriter change the music, but lately I have been feeling like it's the music that changes me. I grow through the music.  It is all equally valid and growth-inducing. 

This may be difficult to answer, but are your Moona Luna audiences mostly filled with families for whom English is a second language, or are they more families for whom English is their primary language?

It really depends on the show. We did a residency in Santa Barbara where we played for underprivileged communities and most were bilingual if not mostly Spanish speakers. This may sound sad, but going to concerts at $15 a pop tend to be less accessible financially to families who do not speak English. When we play free city parks concerts in New York City the non-English speakers tend to be the childcare workers.  This has been my experience. 

Are there gaps that you see (in terms of musical styles, subjects, audiences) that "kindie" doesn't serve well enough?

Kindie audiences, or more specifically, kids, don't tend to favor dark or slow music in a live show scenario. This is just my experience with my own 7-year-old daughter. She likes upbeat music. I do too, but I also love slow, moody, minor and diminished chord music. This is why it's great to have multiple projects because it's hard to satisfy all of my musical cravings with just one band. If I just did Moona Luna I would feel more like an entertainer. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but I don't always feel cheery -- do you? It would be unsatisfying for me if my only musical experience was to put on a happy face and dance. I have many moods and thankfully, three bands to express them all. 

You recently released a song -- "Together" -- with Secret Agent 23 Skidoo.  Are there other musicians you and Moona Luna would love to work with?

I loved collaborating with Skidoo. I heard his voice in my head when I wrote the song so I was pretty happy that he agreed to do it. I really love Lori Henriques' new album. She would be fun to collaborate with. 

You have lots of ongoing projects going on -- Moona Luna, Pistolera, your solo album -- what's next?

At the moment I am really focused on SLV, which in the beginning was billed as my "solo project" but it's not really that, though the band name is my initials! It's really a new band and an equal collaboration with my drummer Sean Dixon, who is the drummer for the experimental electronic band Zammuto. (Check them out!). Since we recorded and released an EP with Meshell Ndegeocello in 2013, we have been working on our debut album. It's been over a year and I'm happy to say it's done and the first music video is filmed. It will come out this spring and you can expect to see us on tour this summer. I've started a new Moona Luna album too and hope to escape the cold of NYC and finish the songwriting part of it in February somewhere warm.

Photo credits: Shervin Lainez (Sandra Velasquez), M. Sharkey (Moona Luna)

Review: Question Bedtime - MC Frontalot

It's an open question whether "nerdcore" is a larger or smaller niche than "kindie," but almost by definition "nerdcore kindie" is smaller than either, and with Question Bedtime, MC Frontalot (who coined the term "nerdcore") has essentially created the first nerdcore kindie album.

Question Bedtime is the Brooklyn-based rapper's sixth album, and first for families, and instead of addressing subjects like video games in his songs, he's gone back in time to fairy tales from various cultures.  But rather than straight-up retellings, he's often given them a twist.  Goldilocks and the Three Bears becomes "Gold Locks," featuring rapper Jean Grae as the titular character, who rather than being scared of the bears, is a bear-eating hunter.  "Start Over" features a conversation of sorts between the Big Bad Wolf and a chorus of girls who aren't exactly buying his version of events with Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother.  Nor does he limit himself to more familiar fairy tales you've heard hundreds of times - "Wakjąkága" features the title character who, well… just read Frontalot's lyrics, and you'll understand that it's not common.  Besides "Start Over," I also particularly liked "Shudders," whose retelling of the story of the youth who went out to learn what fear is (and is really more about fearlessness) is a useful song in an album that features stories that kids have, at points, shuddered at.

One listen to a handful of songs (or reading those lyrics above), and you'll quickly gather that this is not an album for your favorite preschooler.  Not that it's inappropriate or a Joseph Campbell treatise, mind you, just that his dense wordflow and his refusal to dumb down the darker themes of the stories are going to appeal more -- and, really, mean more -- to a significantly older audience, probably ages 9 or 10 and up.

I liked Question Bedtime, but it demands close attention if the listener is to get the most out of it.  (And close attention is hard, no matter if you're 6 or 36.)  The more you like dense hip-hop wordplay, the more you'll like this, and that's not what every kids music family is looking for.  But if you've read this far, and thought, "Hmm, that sounds kind of cool," then I think it's definitely for you.  Recommended.

Note: I received a copy of the album for possible review.

Review: Raise Your Hand - The Not-Its

Like their fellow Seattle kindie musicians Recess Monkey and Caspar Babypants, The Not-Its have settled into a nice groove, delivering a new album consistently every 12 to 18 months since bounding onto the kindie scene in 2009.

And like Recess Monkey before them, the pop-punk quintet has begun to hone their songwriting skills so that by the time they got around to releasing Raise Your Hand, their fifth album, last summer, listeners could feel confident of hearing a nice little playlist of pop nuggets inside.

In that regard, the album does not disappoint.  "When I Fell (The Scab Song)" is power-pop punk at its finest, with the next track "Motorcycle Mom" just as ear-wormy.  And "Haircut" has that appropriately '80s hair-metal sheen for a song about a kid who just wants his (or her) hair to remain wild and untamed.  Even the songs that I was just fine with, a song "Funniest Cat Video" or the title track, inevitably have some sort of musical hook or distinctive production that make the song worth hearing.

As with many of their previous albums, there's a blend of earnestness and sophisticated attitude to the song lyrics -- "Funniest Cat Video" is about the narrator trying (and failing) to make a funny cat video for YouTube, while "Nose In a Book" is all about how awesome reading is.  The references in "Hey 80's" will go straight over the 6-year-old heads (and straight into their 38-year-old parents' heads), while songs like "Bee's Knees" and "Echo" tackle their subjects (bees' environmental fragility and love equality, respectively) with directness.  As an older listener, I wouldn't mind hearing the band tackle some of their more "serious" subjects with a little more of the irreverent attitude they display on their less serious subjects, but that could be the preference of the adult who has heard far more kids music than the vast majority of parents ever will.

Raise Your Hand is most appropriate for kids ages 4 through 9.  And as has become expected with Not-Its albums, the design, from Don Clark, is once again top-notch.  I realize that in the age of Spotify, album designers are probably an endangered species, even in the kids music world, but the CD ain't quite dead yet.  You can stream the entire album here.

As I hope I've made clear, Raise Your Hand is a solid collection of songs, radio-ready pop candy for the first-grade masses.  Families who are longtime fans won't be disappointed and while I might recommend its predecessor KidQuake! as the best introduction to the band, that's just personal preference as opposed to any demonstrative difference in quality.  The quality continues.  Definitely recommended.

Note: I received a copy of the album for possible review.