Review: Two Kids Music Albums from Iceland

[Cue Jim McKay voice] Spanning the globe to bring you a constant variety of the best of kids' music from around the globe, it's Zooglobble! [End Jim McKay voice]

I've never been shy about shining the spotlight on kids music from outside English-speaking North America -- plenty of Spanish-language music from multiple continents, not to mention Putumayo and Secret Mountain (and other labels' ) albums from around the world.

I feel safe in saying, however, that this is by far the furthest afield I've ever traveled, because today I bring you not one but two album reviews from the fine country of Iceland.  Honest-to-goodness kindie music from the northern European country of just a shade over 300,000 people.

The first of the couple albums here is the classic Ekki bara fyrir börn.

"Classic?"  Huh?

Yes, because that album title translates into Not For Kids Only.  This, friends, is a faithful -- albeit Icelandic-language -- cover of the Jerry Garcia and David Grisman's classic 1993 family-friendly bluegrass album.

It's from Icelandic record label Warén Music, and while I'm not sure I could've told you what I expected such a remake to sound like in advance of hearing, I guess I was surprised at the result, which was... well, pretty straight-forward.  It is as if Garcia and Grisman learned Icelandic, got a pot of coffee, found a few more musicians, and re-recorded as if they were some American kindie version of Michael Haneke remaking Funny Games.  (What really happened? Somebody brought over a copy of the original, and the musicians were inspired to recreate it.)

Aside from the language barrier, musically it'll sound a lot the '93 version, albeit a little more punched up, as if a few more musicians stumbled across Garcia and Grisman as they noodled away in the woods.  It's a little odd at points to hear such familiar melodies with unfamiliar words (take "Lagarfljót" for example, the translated version of "Shenandoah").  And then there's Lautaferð bangsanna, which is "Teddy Bear's Picnic" as sung by a Tom Waits' vocal double in Icelandic.  (Listen to the whole thing here.)  With the language barrier, this is accessible to all ages.

I realize this is essentially a novelty record for the English-speaking world -- you'd have to be a massive Garcia/Grisman completist or speak Icelandic in your family to want this.  But it's joyful, and a neat reminder of music's boundary-less nature.

If Ekki bara fyrir börn is American kindie (or American proto-kindie) rendered inscrutable for the typical American audience, Skýjaflétta is thoroughly Icelandic in conception, but completely accessible to audiences of any language.  The album is the brainchild of Sólrún Sumarliðadóttir, who plays in amiina, an Icelandic sextet that grew out of a string quartet and, in addition to releasing music on their own has also played with Sigur Rós.  Sumarliðadóttir wrote the music to accompany a couple of modern dance pieces for very young children, up to age 3.  (According to Sumarliðadóttir, the first 5 tracks are for a piece called "Clouds," the remaining tracks score "Twist and Turn".)

As you might expect from that background, these aren't straightforward pop songs.  The word "Skýjaflétta" means "a braid made of clouds," and this is an ambient dreamscape, but a shiny one, filled with pops, clicks, and toy pianos.  Some tracks, like "Twisty Tangle and Turny Braid," (as translated in English) and "Build" are pensive, exploratory, while songs like "Explore" are designed for more reflective wonder.  They are all wordless, making them, of course, open to everyone.

You can listen to six tracks from the 31-minute album here.  Ironically, just as the Icelandic-language album is for all ages given that almost all Americans will just listen to the music, the instrumental nature of this album, makes it all ages, too, though kids under 5 might particularly groove to this.  This is a thoroughly charming album and while I'm sure I will never get a chance to see the dance pieces these were composed for, I'm glad the album has a chance to cross the ocean for families with adventurous listening habits.  Definitely recommended.

Itty-Bitty Review: 123s and ABCs - Ella Jenkins

Let's begin as we must always begin when talking about Ella Jenkins -- she is a legend.  The Chicago-based musician released her first album for Folkways Records (later Smithsonian Folkways) in 1957, and she's recorded for Folkways ever since.  Jenkins turns 90 years old later this year, but she's still playing live around the country.

This latest album follows up on 2013's Get Moving with Ella Jenkins with another collection of previously-released material.  As you might guess from the album title, this album features songs about counting and the alphabet, presented with empathy and without a trace of irony and hipness.  That's not a putdown -- one of the great joys of listening to and watching Jenkins perform live and on record is hearing and seeing how in sync she is with her audience.  She's not playing to the adults in the back of the room -- she's playing to the kids in the front.  (She wants to get the adults involved, too, but that's usually not at issue on recordings.)  She's leading and teaching them, and the kids adore her for it.  Once your kids have already mastered their letters and numbers, they probably won't want to listen, and you might not want to listen to the album on repeat regardless, but again, it's not for you.

You can listen 3 tracks from the 31-minute album here.  Recommended if you've got preschoolers, and as always, if you yourself sing to preschoolers on a regular basis, regardless of whether you're in a classroom setting or not.

Itty-Bitty Review: Fun Food Songs - Raffi

It has been too long since Raffi gave us a whole album of original music for kids (2002 was the last time, with Let's Play ).  But even though the Canadian kids music legend still has an incredible voice and delights listeners in concert, he's more interested in tweeting and writing than recording new music.  And with a back catalog stretching back 25+ years and more than 10 albums, there's plenty of opportunity for his label to repackage his output in new ways for a new generation.  (See here an example from more than 7 years ago.)

This week sees the release of Fun Food Songs, a collection of songs associated (to varying degrees) with food.  Ranking high on the food association (and enjoyability) scale are Raffi classics like "Peanut Butter Sandwich" and "The Corner Grocery Store."  More of a stretch for the collection (but no less enjoyable) are songs like "Down By the Bay" and "Brush Your Teeth."  These songs are, for the most part, fun, in part because few of them were written or recorded with the idea of Making Food Fun.

The 15-song,  30-minute album is most appropriate for kids ages 2 through 6.  Because I consider a lot of Raffi's work essential, collections of previously-recorded such as these aren't.  But it's a solid collection of songs from a wide range of his albums, and if you don't have any Raffi songs, or if you're looking for an instantaneous food-themed CD for a classroom or daycare setting, this'll be great.  Recommended.

Note: I was provided an advance stream of the album for poss

Review: Baby Beatles - Caspar Babypants

Let us first stipulate that there is no need for a Beatles cover album. The most popular rock band of all time, I have no doubt full cover albums number in the thousands (let alone individual songs, which probably approach if not exceed a million in recorded form).  The originals are permanently lodged in listeners' heads, often in a way that those listeners might wonder why anybody would even try improving upon them.

So, having said that, what of Caspar Babypants' latest collection of songs, Baby Beatles?  Is this just a cop-out, the kindie equivalent of digging into the Great American Songbook as a final musical cash grab?

Let's answer that last question with a firm "no."  As he noted in a recent essay, Chris Ballew, the Caspar Babypants mastermind, owes a great deal of his musical career to the inspiration of the Beatles.   It is better, perhaps, then to view this album as an homage to the lads from Liverpool and their songs, and in that regard Baby Beatles works quite nicely.

Ballew's entire Babypants career has been dedicated to making music for the youngest listeners -- while he certainly would welcome the kindergarteners who want to dance along, he's more interested in their younger siblings.  So while he's always been interested in stripped-down arrangements, that becomes even more important in a covers album where the tricky part is retaining the song's essence while giving the artist's own spin.  That's especially tough given how familiar some of these songs are. 

For the most part, I think Ballew succeeds, usually by making the songs nimble and as light as a feather, even more so than his previously-released songs.  "Here Comes the Sun" is peppier than the original, an incredibly joyful way to kick off the album (his version of "Ob La Di Ob La Da" with Jen Wood gives me similarly happy feelings).   I love the use of faint handclaps on "Birthday."  "Blackbird" hews very closely to the original, but why wouldn't it when it's so perfect to begin with?

I'm not enthused with every reworking -- "Yellow Submarine" and "Octopus's Garden" in particular sound too thin -- but the hits here exceed the misses.  And while some of the song choices seem odd and perhaps picked because of their ostensible ties to childhood ("Mother Nature's Son," "Little Child," "Cry Baby Cry"), those choices at least prevent the album from just being a recap of the Beatles' greatest hits.

The 20-song has a runtime of about 48 minutes and is most appropriate for kids ages 1 through 4, though, c'mon, it's the Beatles.  Just about everybody will recognize at least some of these tracks. 

I don't think any Beatles cover album is essential -- just listen to the originals -- but Baby Beatles is just different enough to hold the listeners' attention far more than they would for some random (often Muzak-inspired) cover.  There is no such thing as a bad Caspar Babypants album, and while I look forward to the next album of his original music and less-well-known traditional songs, this will do quite nicely in the meantime.  Definitely recommended.

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

Review: Got a Minute? - Milkshake

If it's true that behind (or under) many a kids' musician is a child who encouraged (passively or actively) that musician to start making music for families, what happens when those kids grow up?

It's a question we haven't really answered in the 21st century.  ​The Baltimore-area band Milkshake may be one of the first artists of Kindie New Wave to deal.  As the kids of Milkshake's duo Lisa Mathews and Mikel Gehl reach tweenage and even teenage status, the band has suggested that their fifth album, Got a Minute?​, will be their last.

Eleven years after the release of their debut Happy Songs​, the band's changed quite a bit.  Mathews and Gehl are still at the helm, of course, but the band's six people strong at this point and on the new album they bring in a bunch of guest artists, including fellow Marylanders Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer.  That first album had preschool-friendly songs like "Fingers & Toes," but now Milkshake's recording songs like "Girls Wanna Dance" (about middle school dances) and "Workin' Kid Blues" (about doing errands and earning money at age 12).

In some ways, the band hasn't changed -- it's still on the eager side of the kindie spectrum, even if, just as kids do as they mature, some of the song subjects look to the world outside the narrator (see "Baltimore" and "More Than Me").​  They've expanded their stylistic range over time (see on this album, for example, the hip-hop of "More Than Me" or the country of "Lookin Out the Window," the thoroughly sea chanty "We Just Wanna Have Fun," or even the instrumental "Seabreeze"), but for the most part they stick to making pop songs for growing kids.

If there is a weak link with the album it's that the inspiration for the "Got a Minute?" theme, their work for PBS Kids that comprises the final third or so of the album, sits uneasily with the rest of the album.  There's nothing horribly wrong with the songs, it's just that the 18-minute block of more simplistic 1-minute songs targeted at 4-year-olds feels tacked on at the end of a more ambitious (in many ways) 36-minute album that precedes it.

The first two-thirds of the album are most appropriate for kids ages 4 through 11; the last third for kids ages 5 and below.  You can hear several tracks at the band's music page.​

After I listened to Got a Minute? once, on future spins I tended to skip past the opening track, a kinda-barely funny skit where Lisa and Mikel try to get their band into the studio to record a song only to find out that each bandmate is busy.  Upon reflection, though, I think I figured out what Mathews and Gehl were doing with that track -- it was their take on how our kids, who once followed us everywhere, eventually move on to their own things -- and we parents need to move on too, in some way.  If Milkshake is indeed moving on to other things, they've left their kindie fans with one last album that will no doubt please them.  Recommended.

[Disclosure: I was provided a copy of the album for possible review.]​

Review: I Found You! - Caspar Babypants

Chris Ballew's consistently entertaining modernization of old folk tunes (and writing some modern folk tunes of his own) as Caspar Babypants is problematic.

For the reviewer, at least.

Ever since receiving his latest effort I Found You! for at least a couple months now and I've been struggling with how to write about the album.  It's his sixth full-length Caspar Babypants album, and just as every one that's preceded it, it's snappy music, simple but well-constructed -- really, just heaps of fun.

Which makes me a bit sad.

Because, really, if you are a Caspar Babypants fan (as I am), you may already have this album.  And you're probably reading this review a) to confirm your own initial impressions of the album, b) to confirm that yes indeed you should get the album if you don't have it, or c) because you're my mom.  (Just kidding!  I don't think my mom reads my site.)

That doesn't make me sad.  What makes me sad is that if your family hasn't gotten into CB at this point, nothing I could write about this album would likely change your mind.  Chris Ballew writes catchy hooks with the frequency the rest of write grocery lists, and you're not already listening to him?  My pitiful wordsmithing can't change that attitude.

The first tracks here -- the gleeful horn-aided "I Found You," the funky "Just Wondering," the preschool traditional "All the Fish" -- sound like many Babypants classics.  They're instantly catchy and perfectly constructed for preschoolers to grasp and sing along.  That's probably part of my challenge -- unlike a new band with a distinct sound, or an artist changing their musical approach, Ballew doesn't sound that much different here from his first album Here I Am!.  All the components of I Found You! -- the re-imagined folk songs, the obsession with animals and nature, the simple arrangements -- were there from the beginning.  For that reason, while I particularly like the title track and "Just Wondering," some of my favorite pieces are the songs that sound a little different, such as "Say Farewell," treated as a sea shanty, or the fun-spooky "Skeletone."

As with all the Babypants disks, the target age range for this album are kids ages 2 through 6, though it'll certainly have broader appeal than that.  You can find the 50-minute album at the usual kindie suspects.

Despite the occasional navel-gazing in this review, I hope I've also conveyed how excellent I Found You! is.  Just because Chris Ballew's found a groove in recording music as Caspar Babypants doesn't mean that uncreative reviewers such as me should spoil your fun.  Highly recommended.