There are pitfalls in trying to be objective in reviewing music, especially in the close-knit world of kindie music, where if everybody doesn't know everybody (yet), the degrees of separation are small enough that it makes Kevin Bacon look like a loner. And while I deal with that constantly here, adding a layer of "good works" on top of it all, well, consider this then your grain of salt for the two albums discussed here.
First off is Austin's
Mr. Leebot, whose latest album
Erratic Schematic is fundraiser for an orphanage in Ethiopia from which Mr. Leebot (AKA Lee Davila) and his wife recently adopted two babies. As I've
previously mentioned, the idea of adoption is important to me, so I was predisposed to like this album from the get-go. While Mr. Leebot's sound -- think of him as DEVO's kids music side project -- may not be for everyone, he's started to ever-so-slightly fill out his sound (I like the New Wave sound of "Cleaning Theme"). As a whole, it's Leebot's best album yet. And the track at the heart of the album -- "Our Family" -- should be heard far and wide. (Listen to it
here -- just scroll down the page.)
The album is most appropriate for kids ages 3 through 7. You can listen to samples
here.
As for an album geared toward a slightly older crowd, how about
Hamlet? That's for high schoolers, right? Well ,
The Deedle Deedle Dees' Lloyd Miller would beg to differ, having helped his wife's second grade class to write a musical based on the play. Miller recruited Dog on Fleas' Dean Jones and a couple of the Dees to record the music along with kids in the class. The result,
Hamlet: The Album, is alternately rockin' ("Something's Rotten!") and pensive ("Tush, Tush") -- a little bit like the play itself, no? In best Fleas/Dees fashion, the album is ragged around the edges, the Band or the Stones mixed with a Shakespeare and Sesame Street. I'd much rather listen to these kids sing than any number of auto-tuned KidzBoppers.
The album will be most appreciated by kids ages 6 to 11. And if the story behind the album isn't appealing enough, perhaps you'll be heartened to hear that all profits from the album will go to Japan earthquake relief. Listen (or order the album) below.
While neither
Erratic Schematic nor
Hamlet: The Musical have a broad enough appeal for me to endorse the albums unreservedly for all listeners, both are solid enough albums to merit a listen even without the totally worthy backstories. I think a lot of readers will find a lot to like here. Give 'em a spin, maybe even your ducats. Recommended.
Disclosure: I received a copy of Erratic Schematic for possible review.
Can you call a movie franchise a "re-boot" if you're trying to make it look (and sound) like it was made fifty years ago?
Well, if so, then Disney's successfully rebooted at least the soundtrack for Winnie the Pooh, the latest film about A.A. Milne's silly old bear and his friends in the Hundred Acre Wood. The chief allure for most readers here will be the tracks feature Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward, more commonly known as the duo She & Him. Deschanel's voice is a very good fit for the retro sound employed here, such as on the theme song and "A Very Important Thing to Do." Deschanel's original contribution to the soundtrack is the end-credit song "So Long," and it's very much a She & Him track. If you're going to pick up any single song from the soundtrack, it should be that one, though traditionalists might prefer the theme song. I also liked (sight unseen) one of the new tracks, "The Backson Song," which features Craig Ferguson's voicing of "Owl" whipping the cast into a frenzy. The score from Henry Jackman (found on the latter half of the disk) sounds pleasant enough, but unless you have a budding Mozart in the household, that is not the draw for your 4-year-old. (The soundtrack is most appropriate for the movie's target age range, that of about 3 to 6.)
The soundtrack to Winnie the Pooh is not attempting to break any new ground, but that's precisely the point -- it's intended to serve a movie which is trying very hard to envelop the viewer (and listener) in Milne's timelessness. In that regard, the soundtrack succeeds in being as satisfying as a pot of 
While David Weinstone has been incredibly successful licensing his Music for Aardvarks classes, he has not done a lot of recording for the general public.
Which is a little bit sad, because Weinstone is a pretty good songwriter. And on his latest album, All I Want!, he has a number of stellar songs. While some of the songs seem like they originated out of his MFA classes, many of the songs (for the most part, my favorites) sound like they were created outside of a class context. Like a number of artists, Weinstone attempts to cover a broad range of musical styles, from old-timey Dixieland ("I Want a Puppy!") to fuzzed-out Guided By Voices-style rock ("Mighty Milo") to a harmonica-accented waltz ("Beach Song"). "All I Want!" thrashes harder than any kids' song you'll all year, and probably most of the adult songs, too. Although the genre-hopping can be head-spinning, Weinstone's adept at all of it, while also channeling a bit of Barry Louis Polisar acerbic-kid humor (sample from "Better Keep Your Eye on Me!": "I like cell phones, they taste good / They're expensive, man they should.")
The album will be most appreciated by kids ages 3 through 6. You can listen to a few songs 
