If you have any tie to the family music genre, then you are undoubtedly aware of
Many Hands: Family Music for Haiti, the compilation put together by
Dean Jones and
Bill Childs to benefit a variety of Haiti efforts. So there are really two components worth discussing here -- the music itself and What It All Means.
Oddly enough, I'm going to dispose of the big picture question first. The biggest worthwhile component of the project is that it'll benefit the
Haitian People's Support Project, which supports nutritional and educational programs in orphanages, schools, and temporary shelters throughout Haiti. It's an especially important task in the wake of the devastating earthquakes there early this year. Beyond that, the album is pretty much the first family-music-by-family-musicians benefit album ever. Sure you have the
For the Kids series, for example, but those consist primarily of songs recorded by "adult" musicians dabbling in the family music field. The fact that so many "new school" family musicians (and a few "old school" musicians) came together so quickly on this project speaks to the supportive nature of the genre, which bodes well for the future.
All of which I ignore when it comes to reviewing albums. My view tends to be, if you want to support a cause, support it directly with your money, time, and other talents, rather than doing so indirectly. (Or be forced to support a cause you disagree with because you support that indirect thing.) Luckily you don't need to compromise with
Many Hands -- while I imagine the Venn intersection between families who like the new family music scene and families unaware that there was even an earthquake in Haiti would be small, you could give this album to those families, and they'd very much enjoy it.
Because it's a compilation, there isn't the coherency of theme you might get from a single artist (or a compilation focused on, say, the songs of a single artist). Essentially it's a really good mixtape, and the list of good songs here far outweighs the list of duds. Rather than list all of the really good songs, here are 3 that I think are particularly noteworthy:
1)
Lunch Money's "You Are Here" is,
as I've noted already, one of my favorite tracks, both for its album-appropriate theme of connection as well for its mostly-sweet, a little bittersweet melody.
2) Jones' duet with Hudson Valley poet
Jerrice Baptiste is another sweet and thematically appropriate tune, with Jones' falsetto and Baptiste's more spoken-word vocals about building a nest underlaid with a folk-electronica melody.
3)
Jonathan Coulton's "The Princess Who Saved Herself" is neither sweet nor thematically appropriate. It does, however, if I'm allowed to use this phrase on a family music website, kick ass. It's everything a parent of a daughter would want said daughter to hear in formative music-listening years. (Except for the reference to math rock. Really, who likes that?)
There are more good songs -- how could I review an album with songs from They Might Be Giants, Pete Seeger, Dan Zanes, and Elizabeth Mitchell and other luminaries and not even touch on their tracks? -- and, as I said they definitely outnumber the so-so ones. The album's probably most appropriate for kids ages 4 through 9. You can get the album in a lot of places, including
Amazon, iTunes, and, starting in September, Whole Foods.
Simply put,
Many Hands: Family Music for Haiti is the year's best family music compilation and one of the year's best kids music CDs, period. Buy two: one for your friend and one for your own family. Many families will thank you. Definitely recommended.
[Disclosure: I was provided with a copy for possible review. I also premiered a stream of an album track. And Bill's a friend. The kindie music world is a close-knit one. That's why you have this album here.]
Billy Kelly is the whoopee cushion of kids music. Last year he stormed (politely) onto the kids music scene with Thank You For Joining the Happy Club, featuring the instant classic "People Really Like Milk" and other songs that usually brought smiles and occasionally laughs to listeners nationwide. For his just-released follow-up Is This Some Kind of Joke?, a self-described musical comedy album, he dials the funny up to 11.
The album starts off with poppy Is This a Joke?, which in just 2 minutes and 45 seconds, exhibits most of the Billy Kelly style -- nifty rhymes, fancy words, and a song you actually have to think about and listen to carefully if you're going to catch every reference. (I've listened to the album at least a half-dozen times, and I still think I've only caught 90% of the humor.) I say "most" of the style, because that song avoids the self-aware humor Kelly employs often. It's OK -- he uses it elsewhere, such as on "Me and My Brand New Haircut," on which Davy Jones sounds like he totally gets the joke. The chorus on the dance tune (natch) "The Dance From Outer Space" is like the best Greek chorus ever. Kelly hits more musical styles than he does on his debut (I especially liked the funk-sampled "Everybody's Got Their Underwear On"), but it's all in service to the lyrics. If you've heard the album, the lyrics "I already told you I can see you," "Thank you for saying you're welcome," "What's wrong with that guy over there," and "Where is the turtle wax?" will bring big smiles to your face. It's a bit darker than Happy Club -- instead of a song called "Springtime: It's My Favorite" there are songs about an alien dance taking over the world and swamp creatures threatening to take over the world -- but nothing too dark.
And "The Legend of Johnny Box," which owes a big debt, unsurprisingly, to the Man in Black. Wow -- it's one of those songs that starts out unassumingly, builds up to something big, then somewhere east of Poughkeepsie takes a turn into something silly, then epically silly, then beyond silly into that realm few people are willing to go. Let's put it this way... it's more than seven and a half minutes long, and it's worth every second.
As with his debut, it's going to be older kids who most appreciate the dense wordplay and humor Kelly packs in here, say ages 7 on up. You can hear some of the songs at his Myspace page or samples of all the tracks here. I should note that the first 1,000 copies of the album in physical format come hand-signed and packaged with an erasable marker and an incredibly dense maze in poster format that might take your kids the better part of an afternoon to work through.
Like some mutant offspring of the Holland-Dozier-Holland Motown songwriting team and Spike Jones (or possibly "Weird Al" Yankovic's cousin), Billy Kelly has written the album that precocious third graders have wanted all their life and just didn't know it. Their parents didn't know it, either, but now they do. No joke -- this is a seriously fun album. Highly recommended.
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