Weekly Summary (12/9/13 - 12/15/13)

Listen To This: Buy One Get One Flea Sampler - Dog on Fleas

It started as a trickle -- an offer of a free track, "Hinterlands," from the next Dog on Fleas album, punnily titled, Buy One Get One Flea.

And now, while I hesitate to call it a flood -- a stream, perhaps -- more music from the beloved New York everything-including-the-kitchen-sink band is making its way to the public's ears.

The sampler below not only features "Hinterlands" but three other tracks in the same jazzy, picnic blanket sound of some of the band's earlier work.  It also features the "Grand March" from Verdi's Aida, which you'll probably recognize once you hear the melody, though I feel confident in saying James Levine never conducted a version like this.

Buy One Get One Flea will be released February 2, 2014.

Dog on Fleas - Buy One Get One Flea Sampler [Bandcamp]

Weekly Summary (10/28/13 - 11/3/13)

Review: When the World Was New - Dean Jones

There are more than a handful of kids music artists who, in their attempt to anchor their sound in the minds of potential listeners, describe their music in terms of other kids' musicians -- "[Band X] sounds like [Artist Y]."  [Ed.: OK, I'm to blame for that at a reviewer's level, too.]

Dean Jones has never tried to do that, and even if he had, I have no idea who he'd compare himself to, kindie-wise.  As ringleader of the band Dog On Fleas and two solo albums, Jones folds in dozens of instruments modern and ancient, styles jazzy and electronic, into songs that are so far away from subjects that make up the vast majority of most music targeted at kids that we call it "family music" because we have failed to invent another, more descriptive name.

Jones' third solo album, the recently-released When the World Was New​, for example, is 33 minutes of music "loosely looking at the evolution of us silly humans."  It features, among other things, the slow-jam waltz "Prehensile Grip," which wonders where we humans would have been without the ability to grasp things, and "Snail Mail," a funky ode to forgoing electronic mail for the purposes of interpersonal communication.  He's not afraid of tackling weightier subjects like war ("Peace in the Valley") and the meaning of an animal's life ("A Sparrow's Soul"), albeit obliquely.  This makes the album sound ponderous, which it's not -- it's jazzy and mysterious and generous and occasionally danceable.

​The album is most appropriate for kids ages 5 and up.  (Listen to a 5-song sampler here.)  When the World Was New is an intimate album inspired by big questions -- why are we here? what are we doing? where are we going to? -- but never feels like a boring textbook.  Instead, Jones' album is a series of (musical) essays that might prompt a few questions in the listeners' own minds, young and old.  Definitely recommended.

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

How I Got Here: Dean Jones (Laurie Anderson: Mister Heartbreak)

Dean and Trooper A lowres.jpg

Dean Jones is the mad genius behind Dog on Fleas and, as an in-demand producer, about a quarter of ​the kindie albums you'll hear in 2013.

​With the upcoming release of his latest solo album, When the World Was New​, on May 14, Jones authored the latest in the "How I Got Here" series, featuring kindie musicians talking about albums influencing them as musicians.

Dean's piece on composer/musician/performance artist Laurie Anderson's ​mid-'80s album Mister Heartbreak​ is a little bit like the album itself -- you can focus on the words and get some meaning, but you can also just focus on the sounds, the contour of the piece, and get a pretty good sense of its influence on him.

***​

Laurie Anderson's 1984 album Mister Heartbreak is one of my all time favorite records.

MisterHeartbreak.jpg

It's a little hard for me to talk about music.  (Kind of like dancing about architecture.)  But this album is more than just music to me.  It's a sculpture.  It's stories.  Sound.  Color.   It puts me in a mood.  I can't describe the mood that very well.  Open.  Playful.  Thoughtful.   Meditative.  

This album certainly changed the way I hear music.  And it really clarified for me the fact that I'm as much in love with SOUND as I am with music.  Is there really a difference?  I think so.  I know that I have fallen in love with the sounds on the Beatles records.  And Tom Waits records.  And I have always been drawn to certain sounds, like the Indonesian gamelon instruments, and  the various one and two-stringed fiddle type instruments found in various societies as far from each other as Mongolia and Mali.  I also like the sound of all kinds of birds.  Is it their song or just the tone and timbre of their voices?  I like the sound of footsteps, grass rustling, breathing, trees rubbing up against each other.... the list goes on and on.  Tongues touching teeth.  

Somehow this album made it quite clear to me that one could make music that could be closer to sculpture than to any traditional song form.  The sounds evoke images in my mind of elephants, sunrises, movement, and space.  Wonder, and longing.  All kinds of feelings come up.  The sounds are sometimes like a world of their own.  I could live in them.  

"He was an ugly guy.  With an ugly face. An also-ran in the human race.  And even God got sad just looking at him.  And at his funeral all his friends stood around looking sad.  But they were really thinking of all the ham and cheese sandwiches in the next room."

Laurie Anderson is a master of language.  An amazing storyteller and poet.  She loves to look at big things like humanity and love, and stories like Adam and Eve, and rethink them from her unique perspective.   And her delivery, mostly spoken, not sung, is so much more musical to me than most singers are.  The nuance of her rhythm and phrasing is incredible.  I love to listen to music, whether it's instrumental, sung in English, or any other language, and I often just tune out the words.  It's just how I listen.  Sometimes I tune into lyrics, but often it's just a texture.  And with Laurie Anderson's voice I am happy to just let the lyrics ebb and flow in and out of my conscious listening.  But I can listen to this record twice back to back and allow myself to follow her stories more on the second listen.

Here's a bit of her Adam and Eve retelling:

"And the woman liked the snake very much.  Because when he talked he made little noises with his tongue, and his long tongue was lightly licking about his lips.  Like there was a little fire inside his mouth and the flame would come dancing out of his mouth.  And the woman liked this very much.  And after that she was bored with the man.  Because no matter what happened, he was always as happy as a clam."

Maybe I'm seduced by the sound of Laurie Anderson's voice, but I think her writing is genius.  

Something that sound sculpture like this allows for -- words don't have to rhyme.  You don't have to have everything be totally divisible by 4 or 8.  You can, but you don't have to.  The words can fit into spaces.  You can leave spaces.  Or not.   Even the music doesn't always have to be divisible by 4.  It can be in no time signature.  

So, what are the sounds on this record?  Well the guitars don't often sound like guitars.  And I still don't know who's making what sounds most of the time.  The sounds are hypnotic and magnetic.  Laurie sometimes puts her voice through a vocoder, which was a pretty new thing at the time, well before it became a Top 40 gimmick.  Some of the instruments listed:  plywood, kayagum, electronic conches, iya and ikonkolo, bamboo, gato, Synclavier, bowls.  Adrien Belew plays some of the greatest guitar you will ever hear.  Peter Gabriel, Nile Rodgers, Bill Laswell, and William Burroughs are heavily featured.   

I was thinking about my latest album, When the World Was New, and realized what a debt I owe to Laurie Anderson, lyrically and musically.  It may not sound at all like her, but she's in there for sure.

My Favorite (Best?) Kids Music of 2012

While the posting date on this says 2012, I have to tell you the truth.  I am totally  back-dating this thing.  I am writing this at the end of October 2013 in preparation of writing my Top 10 lists for 2013. 

You see, my secret shame is that I never published my list(s) of my favorite kids music of 2012.

Oh, the shame, it burns... 

Now, it's not like I didn't seriously think about this subject last year.  Besides co-coordinating the 2012 Fids and Kamily Awards, I also voted in them, and the top 10 albums below reflect my vote in the awards.  But I do receive far more great kids music than I can fit into my ten-slot F&K ballot, so this is my opportunity to give some shout-outs to some artists.  Looking at this list, there are easily 6 or 7 of those albums on the list from #s 11 through 25 that could easily be swapped into the Top 10 list.

So in order not to make this already more embarrassing or major-movie-romantic-comedy-like, without further ado (or, frankly, comment), here are my lists of the best (or at least favorite) in kids music, circa 2012.  (If you define, as I do, 2012 as being Nov. 1, 2011 through Oct. 31, 2012.)

Top Kids Music Albums

1.  The Okee Dokee Brothers - Can You Canoe?

2.  Elizabeth Mitchell - Blue Clouds

3.  The Board of Education - Binary

4.  Dog on Fleas - Invisible Friends

5.  Johnny Bregar - My Neighborhood

6.  Lunch Money - Spicy Kid

7.  Recess Monkey - In Tents

8.  Various Artists - Science Fair

9.  Secret Agent 23 Skidoo - Make Believers

10.  Various Artists (Matt Wilson) - WeBop: A Family Jazz Party

Albums 11-25 (unranked, shown in alphabetical order) 

Caspar Babypants - Hot Dog!

Coal Train Railroad - Swings! 

Lucky Diaz and the Family Jam Band - A Potluck

Duke Otherwise - Creepy Crawly Love 

Elska - Middle of Nowhere 

Jennifer Gasoi - Throw a Penny in the Wishing Well

Jumping Through Hoops - Rockin' to the Fiddle

Randy Kaplan - Mr. Diddie Wah Diddie 

Kori Pop - Songs for Little Bean 

Elizabeth Mitchell - Little Seed 

Elena Moon Park - Rabbit Days & Dumplings 

The Pop Ups - Radio Jungle

Renee & Jeremy - A Little Love 

They Might Be Giants - No! (Deluxe Reissue) 

Laura Veirs - Tumble Bee

 

A special shout-out here to Adventures of Chicken Weebus , which isn't really kids music so I didn't really consider it for this list, but based on pure entertainment value definitely ranks in our Top 25.

 

Top Kids Music Debut Albums (listed alphabetically)

Duke Otherwise - Creepy Crawly Love 

Elska - Middle of Nowhere

Kepi Ghoulie - Kepi for Kids 

Jumping Through Hoops - Rockin' to the Fiddle 

Kori Pop - Songs for Little Bean

Alison Faith Levy - World of Wonder (I know, not quite fair given her history with the Sippy Cups, but still...)

Elena Moon Park - Rabbit Days & Dumplings

Play Date - Imagination 

Laura Veirs - Tumble Bee

Various Artists (Matt Wilson) - WeBop: A Family Jazz Party