Review in Brief: Sunny Side Up - Egg

Egg is the creation of LA-based audio engineer Jeff Fuller who wrote some songs with his young daughter Annabella, wrote some more songs himself, and recruited some other moms and dads to record the songs for an album. Reading over that description might not necessarily fill you with hope for the album -- good intentions and enthusiasm being a poor substitute for, you know, musical talent and songwriting skills -- but luckily their debut album Sunny Side Up has enough of that musical talent and songwriting skills to make it a fun listen. The band mentions Cake as one of their musical reference points, and I can hear that, at least in the somewhat spare arrangements that rely a lot on drums and, on a couple tracks, trumpet. But I hear more of a West Coast Brady Rymer. It's roots-rock mixed with a little country and with a more sunny (album title pun unintended), wide-open feel. The album has a loosey-goosey sound (I mean that as a compliment here) and it serves as an appealing musical background for lyrics that are squarely aimed at the preschool set. In part this probably partially reflects the influence of Fuller's daughter, but it's nice to hear songs about shuffling down the hall (the angular "Flip Flops") or summer ("Summer Today") that retain that kid's perspective. "Hiccups" is a goofy, make-the-kids-laugh song, while the last two songs ("Airplane" and "Goodnight") are tender ballads. Kids ages 3 through 7 are most likely to enjoy the songs here. You can hear sound clips from the 26-minute album at its CD Baby page. Egg's Sunny Side Up will have no small appeal to families who prefer their kids music (if not their eggs) a little bit scrambled. Recommended.

Review: OMG or LOL? Three Disney Disks

Let me start this review by suggesting that, for all its sins real or imagined, Disney Music purveys more original music for kids and families than any other label. It is possible to avoid a fair amount of that if you don't actually watch cable TV on a regular basis, but they put out a lot of music on a regular basis, and for all age ranges. Not to mention a back catalog the envy of just about anybody. How much you actually enjoy it all depends in part on your age, but I've got three recent Disney releases here, and at least one of them is worth your time.

I admit it. I'm old. Not, like, Social Security old, but old enough that if I use the phrase "OMG" I mean it ironically. I am old enough, however, to have a kid who, though she isn't quite out of the "kids music" phase yet, will start listening to music I haven't introduced her to. So I understand quite clearly that the soundtrack to Camp Rock, the latest Disney Channel original movie, premiering on a gazillion different channels this week, is Not For Me. It is for kids just a little older than my daughter. They'll spend their own allowances on it, or maybe their parents will get it for them. And what they'll get is an attempt to duplicate the High School Musical magic, except this time in a slightly more rock-oriented retelling of Cinderella. The album features some tracks with Joe Jonas solo (he's got a leading role in the movie) as well as a Jonas Brothers track. There are some songs by 16-year-old Demi Lovato, who has the lead female role and seems to be Disney's leading contender for a Miley Cyrus with a less pop and more rock edge. The songs are fine enough, and most of the songs won't drive you to change the station if you hear them on Radio Disney (OK, maybe "Hasta La Vista," ugh), but you're not going to remember them 15 minutes after they're over. There's nothing as memorable as "Breaking Free" or "Fabulous" or "You Are the Music In Me," all of which are decent pop songs. In the end, it's not really for me, but it never really was.

Review: Camp Lisa - Lisa Loeb

It's not like we weren't prepared for the possibility of a Lisa Loeb kids' music album -- after all, she (relatively) famously joined with her old Brown University singing partner Elizabeth Mitchell to produce Catch the Moon in 2004. But it certainly took Loeb a while to get around to a kids' album of her own, and it's not quite what we might have expected. Loeb released her new album, Camp Lisa, last week, and it's a considerably different album from Catch the Moon. Whereas that album was definitely targeted to the preschool set (it was packaged with a small picture book, after all), Loeb's album is a concept album that celebrates summer camps. I mean this in the best possible way -- Camp Lisa is an winningly dorky album. By that I mean it expertly blends earnest and original "camp life" songs with earnestly sung renditions of traditional songs and chants. I mean, the album leads off with the cheeky "Ready For The Summer," the theme from the movie Meatballs. While perhaps there's a small wink and nudge in Loeb's and Letters to Cleo's Kay Hanley's vocals, the group of kids singing along do so with gusto and without any irony. It's summer camp -- the more you through yourself into it, the more fun you'll have. The original tunes here, including "Best Friend," "When It Rains," and "It's Not Goodbye" (which features a nifty segue into the camp chestnut "Make New Friends"), have an appealingly laid-back, '70s AM-radio vibe whose sounds will appeal to the parents of kids going off to summer camp and whose lyrics, should the kids settle down long enough to pay attention, might actually frame their camp experience. (The whole album is well-sequenced, working from heading off to camp to leaving it.) The traditionals -- "Woodchuck," "Peanut Butter & Jelly," and "Father Abraham" -- wouldn't be strong enough to merit a whole album on their own, but integrated into the other songs, they provide a nice contrast. Loeb pulls in a whole bunch of help here, from Jill Sobule (on the dreamy "Cookie Jar Song") to Veruca Salt's Nina Gordon on the ukulele-accompanied "Linger." Kudos, too, to Loeb for a) getting Steve Martin to appear on her album, and b) asking him just to play banjo (which he does well on "The Disappointing Pancake"). Given that these are songs about going to camp, I'll put the age range here at ages 7 and up, though certainly a lot of the traditional tunes will appeal to the younger set, too. For the moment, the 39-minute album is only available at Barnes & Noble -- you can hear samples and buy the album here. (I should also note that in conjunction with the album's release, Loeb has also launched the Camp Lisa Foundation, a non-profit that will raise funds to help send underprivileged kids to summer camp.) Camp Lisa does a very good job of evoking -- both prosaically as well as emotionally -- the summer camp experience, and I think that any family who's gone through that (or is going to go through that) will find this a very worthy album. But even if you're doing the summer camp thing, there are enough good songs here that you'll probably linger a little while with it. Recommended.

Review: Nueva York! - Dan Zanes

Imagine if Kanye West decided his next album would be a bluegrass album. Or if Metallica felt they had a polka album in them. How would their fans react? How would the bluegrass or polka purists react? Most importantly, would the music be any good? I'm thinking about those questions after having listened to Nueva York!, the latest album from Dan Zanes. The album, released yesterday, is Zanes' eighth "age-desgregated" album, the follow-up to his 2006 Grammy-winning album Catch That Train!. And, after slowly building up his rep as the godfather of family-friendly music for American families, Zanes has chosen to release an album songs from Latin America and Mexico recorded 99% in Spanish. Zanes has released less obviously kid-oriented albums in the past -- an album of seafaring songs (Sea Songs) and an album of songs from Carl Sandburg's Songbag -- but those were released when Zanes had a little lower profile than he does now. So while Zanes probably couldn't act like Beck did early in his career, and release his higher-profile stuff with Geffen while releasing other, more challenging albums on small labels, he should still get credit of some sort for embracing this new album as the full-fledged follow-up to Catch That Train! But back to the original question -- is the music any good? Yeah, it's good. The album starts out with insistent drums and the driving "El Pescador," which rocks as hard anything in Zanes' kid-ography, helped out by Marc Ribot on guitar. "Colas" mixes tuba into a a Mexican son joracho recorded with the Villa-Lobos brothers. "Pollito Chicken" is the closest thing to a "kids' song" here, with a kids' chorus helping out the children's rhyme. On it goes -- through Daphne Rubin-Vega's turn on the beautiful la-la-las of "Alba Mananera," the Villa-Lobos brothers' forceful string playing on "El Pijul," and long-time DZ compatriots Rubi Theatre Company on the multilingual "El Canario." I certainly can't speak with any knowledge of how "authentic" the renditions are, but these mostly traditional songs probably don't sound like this today in their "home" countries, either. These renditions here are vibrant, full of life, with solid musical performances. More so on perhaps his other CDs, Zanes takes a little bit more of a backseat to his fellow musicians -- it's a more collaborative album than any of his previous efforts, which befits the learning and immersive nature of this project. As good as the music is here, I can't say this is the perfect DZ album. At over an hour in length, it goes on for too long. Kids who have grown up on Zanes' albums may miss the absence of Father Goose and his silliness especially. And it's going to be hard for a lot of English-speaking families to fully "get into" the album when it's virtually entirely in Spanish. None of which the album bad as an entity unto itself, but for those families who stumbled recently onto Zanes via a Playhouse Disney video and haven't been listening for five years, it's likely to be a little bit confusing, at least. While the album is another all-ages experience, it doesn't have quite the early-years hook some of Zanes' other albums have, so I'm going to put the target age range here at ages 5 and up. You can hear samples of the tracks just about everywhere online, or you can listen to "Colas," "La Piragua," and "El Botellon" right now at Zanes' Myspace page. With Nueva York!, Zanes has crafted another album of fun, family-friendly community music. Going back to the question I posed earlier -- does it really matter who does a bluegrass album so long as the album is good? While the album is a less-than-perfect introduction to his music, longtime Zanes families will embrace this CD as just another part of his wide-ranging musical explorations. And hopefully it'll introduce Dan Zanes to a whole new set of fans. You'll listen, you'll dance, and -- Zanes hopes -- you just might even sing along. Definitely recommended.

Review: Don't Forget the Donut! - Wayne Potash

A number of months ago, someone e-mailed me and suggested I check out the kids music of Boston-area musician Wayne Potash. She said that he was (and I'm quoting here), "completely lacking in hip-ness... His band is called 'The Music Fun Band' which is one of the stupidest names I’ve ever heard of, and Wayne looks like a hippie freak wearing a fish hat. However, if you can get past that, he’s an amazing musician for little kids." Well, those of you who have read me for any length of time know that those are exactly the kinds of things I can get past. (I don't think I ever had a fish hat, but did have a bag that looked like a trout, so there you go.) And if you can get past those things (and the not-terribly-inspiring album cover, too), his 2005 album Don't Forget the Donut! might just be up your alley. From goofy little songs like "Stunt Car" and "Wiggly Tooth" to breezy reworkings of classics like "When the Red Red Robin Comes Bob Bob Bobbin' Along" and "The Frim Fram Sauce," Potash has a relaxed attitude that serves the music well. He's not trying to remake children's music, he's just having some fun. Not that the music isn't well-played. Potash mixes some jazz (the classic tracks above) with some bluegrass ("Hot Corn, Cold Corn", "Cindy") along with some poppier originals like the groovy "Lobster Dance." His duet with Suzanne Clark on "Down in the Valley" is -- dare I say it? -- better than Dan Zanes. I liked Potash most in his quieter, folkier moments, such as on "Street Sweeper," as opposed to the more '70s guitar-oriented stuff at the end of the album (it's about 8-10 minutes too long), but it's all done without pretension. (Proof of that is the ended-by-laughter version of "Haul Away Joe.") Kids ages 3 through 7 will enjoy these songs the most. You can hear samples of all the tracks at the 48-minute album's CDBaby page. Yes, the album is 3 years old at this point, but he's also working on a new CD. Wayne Potash isn't trying to set the kids music world on fire, he's just covering some good traditional and classic songs and writing decent original music. Don't Forget the Donut! might not become your family's most favorite album, but I can see it lasting in the CD player long after other CDs have worn out their welcome. As my original e-mail tipster said, "he doesn’t rock, exactly. He’s extremely uncool. And yet, he’s pretty amazing, either despite those things or perhaps because of them." I think those of you out there know if that applies to your family. Recommended.

Review: The Rhyming Circus - Ralph's World

Ralph Covert has few peers when it comes to kids' music songwriting -- Justin Roberts?, the guys from Recess Monkey?, Molly Ledford from Lunch Money? -- the list is short. Over the course of six original albums in his guise as Ralph's World, the Chicago-based Covert created a body of work that holds up against any other kids' musician, work that helped convince Disney to sign Covert to its label. The Rhyming Circus, Covert's first collection of new material since signing to Disney, does not give any indication that his skill in putting together of kid-friendly pop tunes has waned at all. The leadoff title track is filled with a nifty little series of rhymes, of course ("Bats in hats wearing suits and spats / And cats on mats what do you think of that / Fats the rat juggling some gnats / They’re all stars in the Rhyming Circus"). "Gotta Be Good" is a sunny pop-rocker, "Edward the Tap-Dancing Elephant" has a 21st century Tin Pan Alley feel, and so on down the line. Beatles references are woven throughout ("Happy Not My Birthday," "Abby's Alphabet Soup" and the funky "Do The Math" among them, the latter closing with an emphatic final "Day in the Life" piano chord). Oddly enough, "Folsom Daycare Blues," with Covert reworking the Johnny Cash classic, is the weakest track on the album; it's sort of a cheap joke that the kids won't get at all. For those of you more familiar with the Ralph's World oeuvre, I'd say The Rhyming Circus more in the Peggy's Pie Parlor camp than his two subsequent albums, which had a more rocking feel. I consider Green Gorilla, Monster & Me to be in the vicinity of the top 10 kids' albums of the past 10 years, so if I'm not as enthusiastic about this new album, it's not a reflection of the album's quality as much as it is a reflection of my personal musical taste. (And I know that there's a strong segment of Ralph's fanbase that adores Peggy's Pie Parlor, which I like, just not as much as the two albums that followed.) One other comment, this directed at Disney. I know they know what they're doing, but there are few kids' artists that create as fanciful a story through song as Covert (especially on this album -- just listen to "Rodeo Peg" or "King of the Alphabet" for two examples). Why, then, do the videos for the new album (the title track is available as a bonus on the disk, and the first two can be seen here) just feature Covert in a live setting with bouncing kids? It's mostly forgettable, or at least undistinguishable from countless other kids' videos, albeit with higher production values. Disney is missing a major opportunity to create something memorable by not recruiting former Covert cover illustrator Giselle Potter to design a few videos. The CD will be of most interest to kids ages 4 through 8. You can hear samples across the internet, while Covert's Myspace page has a few tracks available for streaming. The Rhyming Circus is another collection of top-quality (in every way) kids' pop-rock. Ralph's World fans will not be disappointed with the release, and those who aren't fans already should certainly give Covert a shot in the stereo. Recommended.