Review: Christmas and Holiday Music 2015 (Albums)

Every year brings a handful of Christmas and holiday-themed albums from the kindie world, and 2015 is no exception. (Here's my review of 2014 holiday kids music, in case you want to reminisce around the fire about last year's efforts.) This year, I'll be splitting my holiday posts into at least two -- this post will focus on reviews of full albums and EPs, while a follow-up will take a look at holiday singles and videos.

Without further ado, then, let's get into it.

Andrew and Polly - Other Days

This is the shortest holiday album I'll be reviewing, but it's also my favorite. It's non-religious but ecumenical -- Hanukkah and Christmas happily coexist (especially in the leadoff track "Thank You for the Box") -- and in less than 12 minutes the four indie-pop tracks celebrate the season with a decidedly sunny attitude (there's a song called "L.A. Christmas" featuring Mista Cookie Jar, after all). But the closing track "A Mapmaker's Song" is a kindie successor to "I'll Be Home for Christmas." (Listen to the album on Bandcamp and Spotify.)

Rocknoceros - Happy Holidays

Ranking a close second on my holiday list this year is this collection from the Washington, D.C.-area trio. They ease into the holiday with a Halloween song ("Halloween Masquerade") and "This Thanksgiving" before turning their attention to the December holidays with songs original and traditional. (Or, in the case of "Oh Christmas Brie," silly puns.) One of the things I look for in holiday albums is something that distinguishes the music from the tens of thousands of other such albums, and besides the power-holiday-pop, I guess for me it's their mashup of "Auld Lang Syne (Enjoy Yourself)" -- not quite a Christmas song, but a great song with which to head into 2016.

Greg Page - Here Comes Christmas

Best known in the United States probably for being the original Yellow Wiggle for the massively successful Australian preschool rockers, Page hasn't been totally silent in the meanwhile -- he's done a TV show, Butterscotch's Playground. But this is his first newly-recorded album in a long time. The best tracks here are the originals that lead off the album, particularly "Here Comes Christmas" and "Christmas Bells." They're appealing pop songs that should entertain kids and families who have no memory of the Wiggles. The rest of the tracks feature a wide variety of secular and religious Christmas songs. Page's strong voice is sometimes undercut by electronic accompaniment -- if releasing a kajillion different holiday albums with a big band works for Brian Setzer, I think it could work for Page, who has a clear affinity for traditional arrangements.

Rain For Roots - Waiting Songs

Rain For Roots consists of four vocalists (including Coal Train Railroad's Katy Bowser) who make Christian kids music that's devotional without being tacky. This new album, specifically designed for the waiting season of Advent, sees them continuing that approach. The album features original songs from the quartet (with some kids singing along in places), along with traditional songs "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" and "Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus" bookending the new songs. The explicitly Christian approach will limit the audience for this album perhaps, but if you are celebrating the Christmas season from a Christian perspective, this is an excellent addition to your holiday music rotation. (Stream the album on Bandcamp.)

Little Rockers Band - Yule Be Cool cover

The Little Rockers Band - Yule Be Cool

Yule Be Cool is, as you might guess from the album cover, fairly ecumenical in its approach to the holiday season, with a number of Jewish Hanukkah songs to go along with the Christmas songs (or, sometimes, both in one, as in the reworking of "Feliz Navidad"). The 47-minute album is a mix of old and new, and most interesting when it emphasizes the band's pop sound, like on the '60s sound of "It's Christmas Time Again." Finally, after hearing their take on Madonna's "Holiday," I can't believe that we haven't heard that particular song on more holiday albums.

London Philharmonic Orchestra (Maestro Classics) - The Nutcracker

Finally, it's another take on what must be a top-10 Christmas album subject, Peter Tchaikovsky's "The Nutcracker." What differentiates this version from most (if not all) of the hundreds (thousands?) of other recordings is twofold -- first, the recording features narration to go along with the music. Lots of kids have probably seen some form of the ballet either live or on TV, so it's not like the narration is necessary, but it might actually help those kids who've seen it to remember more of the story, particularly in the first act. Second, the recording pares down the 90-minute ballet to just shy of an hour. I doubt any but the most obsessed listeners will notice the difference. I wouldn't recommend this version as a family's primary copy of "The Nutcracker" -- it's much-beloved for good reason -- but as an alternative, it'll do just nicely.

Note: I received copies of all albums in physical or digital format for possible review.

Video: "L.A. Christmas" - Andrew & Polly and Mista Cookie Jar (World Premiere!)

The 2015 Christmas and winter holiday season is nearly upon us and while I generally really try to limit my coverage (and own personal spinning of Christmas tunes) to after Thanksgiving, this new video and song from Los Angeles-based Andrew & Polly along with fellow L.A.-based musician Mista Cookie Jar is too groovy not to peek under the Christmas music tree a little early.

The song is called "L.A. Christmas" and while it does feature some "la's," the "L.A." in the title stands for "Los Angeles," and the song features some nice harmonies and MCJ -- the Paul F. Tompkins of kids' music for how he appears on just about everything -- helping with some rhymes. As for the video, well, let's just say the video features Christmas lights on a tree. A palm tree.

The song's one of four on Andrew & Polly's Other Days EP (available on iTunes and elsewhere). Anyway, I'm happy to world-premiere it -- enjoy, regardless of whether it's 25 degrees Fahrenheit or Celsius where you are...

Andrew & Polly and Mista Cookie Jar - "L.A. Christmas" [YouTube]

2015 Fids and Kamily Music Awards logo

Fids and Kamily Award Winners for 2015 Announced!

2015 Fids and Kamily Music Awards logo

Oh my goodness, is it that time of year again? The time for the Fids and Kamily Music Poll?

It is, yay!

For those of you who aren't familiar with Fids and Kamily, it's a yearly event I founded back in 2006 that combines yearly top 10 lists from a whole bunch of folks who listen to a lot of kids music to come up with a consensus list of the year's best music for kids and families. (If you want more philosophy behind the awards, you can read this post.)

Anyway, Bill Childs from Spare the Rock, Spoil the Child has been coordinating the awards with me from the very beginning in 2006. And if I'm doing my math right, that means that's ten years of celebrating the best in music for kids and families.

Now we're tickled pink to get to announce the winners for 2015, led by the consensus winner, Trees, by Molly Ledford and Billy Kelly. The Top 12 albums of 2015 are (in order):

1. Molly Ledford and Billy Kelly - Trees

2. Alastair Moock and Friends - All Kinds of You and Me

3. The Pop Ups - Great Pretenders Club

4. Lori Henriques - How Great Can This Day Be

5. (tie) Renee and Friends - Simpatico

5. (tie) Recess Monkey - Hot Air

7. Tim Kubart - Home

8. Josh and the Jamtones - Rocksteady

9. Red Yarn - Deep Woods Revival

10. (tie) Andrew and Polly - Odds & Ends

10. (tie) Jazzy Ash - Bon Voyage

10. (tie) Vered - Hello My Baby

[Note: this post has been updated to reflect a correction in the list as the Jazzy Ash and Vered albums were incorrectly omitted due to an inadvertent scoring error.]

You can go over to Fids and Kamily to see more, like the 8 honorable mention winners, and you can listen to selections from the top 12 by streaming this week's Spare the Rock, Spoil the Child.

Thanks as always to all the musicians who make music for families, the judges for making their lists and checking them twice, and to you, dear readers and listeners, for supporting and being interested in music for kids and families!

Radio Playlist: New Music October 2015

This is the busiest time of the year for releases in the kids music world -- I would've held a couple of these back just to make the list a little shorter... but next month's will probably be just as long. If you want to catch my list from September you can see that playlist here.

As always, it's limited in that if an artist hasn't chosen to post a song on Spotify, I can't put it on the list, nor can I feature songs from as-yet-unreleased albums. But I'm always keeping stuff in reserve for the next Spotify playlist.

Check out the list here.

**** New Music October 2015 (October 2015 Kindie Playlist) ****

"Get Happy" - The Verve Pipe

"If You're Happy and You Know It" - Treva LaViva

"Breakfast Club (feat. Carly Ciaricchio)" - Tim Kubart

"Magic Elevator" - Hot Peas 'n Butter

"Love Is the Way" - Sunshine Collective

"All of the Colors" - Mil's Trills

"Bird's Tweets. Presto leggiero" - The Amazing Keystone Big Band

"Grapes" - Andrew & Polly

"Peach Tree" - Alex and the Kaleidoscope

"Verduras" - Jose-Luis Orozco

"Goin' to the Pool" - The Bug Family Band

"Speedy Hill" - Dad-a-Razzo

"This Land is Your Land" - Rolie Polie Guacamole

"The End" - Caspar Babypants

Review: Odds & Ends - Andrew & Polly

Andrew & Polly - Odds & Ends album cover

Sometimes album titles don't signify much, but in the case of the brand-new album from Los Angeles-based duo Andrew & Polly, I think it's 100% on point.

Just like the random collection of stuff on the shelf on the album cover art, the tracks here are an assortment of tiny treasures and tracks with less heft. Unlike many albums, in an interview with them, the duo noted that the album reflects a collection of songs they've written and recorded over time. Sometimes the results are magical -- "Little Bitta You," a previously-released single, is a zippy and sweet folk-pop song, for example. And their new song "Grapes" is a strong contender for catchiest kindie track of the year, with a singalong chorus filled with "la la las."

At other points, it does feel like one of those "B-Side" collections that your favorite power-pop band might have released after fifteen years together -- your XTCs, your Fountains of Wayne. There are three covers ("Forever Young," "Here Comes the Sun," and my favorite of the three, "Ghostbusters"), for example plus "Critters," their non-religious take on Bill Staines' classic "All's God's Critters" ("got a place in the choir / some sing low / some sing higher...").

Andrew & Polly have been devoting a lot of attention to their podcast for kids Ear Snacks, and some tracks feel very much like excerpts like that. "Ghostbusters," with a lot of kid-interaction, was sort of a prototype for the podcast, while "Fruitphabet" is a playful thing, more sound-and-word-play than pop song. At 28 minutes in length, the album's brevity -- it's barely more than an EP -- is one more thing that makes me think of this as a "B-side" collection.

The album is most appropriate for kids ages 3 through 6, and I should make clear that my middle-aged perspective on what an album "is" (or isn't) won't matter to the kids, who will sometimes groove and other times laugh to the folky, smart, and weird stuff on Odds & Ends. Ear Snacks is a genuinely original podcast as well. Andrew & Polly can write such sharp music, that I'm very much looking forward to the next set of songs from the duo, which they say will be a coherent concept album. In the meantime, there are some tiny treasures on this album, and those will do just fine. Recommended.

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

Andrew & Polly with accordion and ukulele

Interview: Andrew Barkan and Polly Hall (Andrew & Polly)

Like most working musicians, Andrew Barkan and Polly Hall -- the married couple best known to the sippy cup set as Andrew and Polly -- wear many hats. They're kids musicians, sure, but also children's show music writers, commercial jingle writers, and more. And this month, while the Los Angeles-based duo release their second full-length kids' album Odds and Ends, they're also continuing to release episodes of their brand new podcast for kids, Ear Snacks. (Appropriately enough for these multi-hat musicians, Episode 2 is all about hats.)

I chatted with them by phone last week about how they met, how they found their way to kids music, their new releases, and the birthday party that spurred the release of Odds and Ends.

Zooglobble: What are your earliest musical memories?

Polly Hall: When I was very little, my next-door neighbor took violin lessons. I was two years old, and I asked to play the violin "just like Mary Beth." So at three, I got a violin and started taking lessons. I took lessons using the Suzuki method, and when you practice violin, you stand on this mat with an outline of feet... I remember singing with my family on holidays -- I grew up in a Jewish family and music was really important. My mom would sing, and we sang in groups, singing about the history.

Andrew Barkan: I remember my dad making up songs in the car to keep us from destroying the car. Mom sang, too, but Dad was the chief song-maker-upper.... I remember visiting this huge cathedral in San Francisco called Grace Cathedral and hearing music there. It's seven, eight stories high -- it's cavernous, and sounds take seven seconds to fade away.

How did you meet?

Polly: We met in college -- both of us sang in a cappella groups. Andrew played the piano. At 16, I had got a guitar, and at 19 I was writing folk songs and wanted to make a record. A mutual friend introduced us.

As a violinist you play melody, but in college I studied theory. I got interested in electronic and computer music, and production. So I went to grad school for [electronic and computer music]. Andrew went to grad school for film scoring.

Andrew: I taught for a while...

Polly: We both taught.

Andrew: I was teaching and being in the studio. I realized that being in the studio for eight to ten hours -- I could do that.

Besides writing kids' music, we write commercials and other things. We get to write in many different genres, it's a mind challenge.

How did Andrew & Polly come about?

Polly: In 2006 we were living in Providence, finished with grad school, and were stuck there for a couple weeks. We're always singing together and could sing in harmony. We had lots of friends with kids, my sister, so we made a recording that we gave to friends. They'd say that they couldn't get through car rides without it, or they'd listen before bed. These were all covers, but we began writing songs. I [Polly] was co-owner of a music studio at the time, and so we moved to Los Angeles in the summer of 2010, and released our album (Up and At 'Em) right then.

We decided to play some shows.... Los Angeles has a great scene for kids and families -- they like being in a place with music. It was liberating to find joy in performing.

Andrew: Life on the road, playing... the west side of Los Angeles is not that. It was a break from the studio to play in front of a hundred kids, it let us reflect on what we were doing.

Polly: How did it begin?... In college, I did a radio show, and my co-host babysat in Manhattan. My mom constantly resourced awesome children's music. There was this one guy from Kentucky named Joe Wise...

Andrew: He was folky and smart and weird. He told stories, too.

Polly: Even just a little story that went nowhere. He had a lovely song called "Show Me Your Smile."

Andrew: No AutoTuning.

So Odds and Ends -- it's folky and smart and weird, by the way -- is the title significant in that it signifies that these are random songs written through the years, or was it recorded with the specific album in mind?

Polly: Somewhere in the middle. After we won the Joe Raposo Children's Music Award in 2012 and Sirius-XM radio started playing our music, we wrote and recorded "Little Bitta You" in a flash of inspiration. Mindy Thomas at Sirius-XM loved it. So we'd write and record and ask ourselves, "Should we wait?" And we'd say, "No, let's release it now." The downside is we wouldn't have the content for a full-length album. But the upside is there's new content all the time.

Andrew: So we'd get the next one out when it was ready.

Polly: Children get obsessed for periods of time, so the singles do well.

Andrew: We do it in our home studio.

Polly: Here's the reason we finally had to do a full album. [In 2013], we played a birthday party for one-year-olds in San Francisco, and as a party favor, all five families hosting gave copies of Up and At 'Em. Two years later [this spring], the five families had us back for the three-year-old birthday party, and we couldn't not have a new CD for them.

Andrew: We had to create the CDs before the tracks were done.

Polly: We created the test run for them -- gave them 80 copies, and the other 70 we sold at shows.

Andrew: Polly does all the artwork.

Polly: We added a couple tracks, reworked some songs. We're reaching a new audience and we're really pleased.

How come you wanted to create Ear Snacks?

Andrew: We love podcasts. I in particular -- listen while walking the dog, and so on.

Polly: Andrew is also legally blind, he reads with his ears.

Andrew: We have a son who's 18 months old. Knows about headphones, but the TV is off. He knows we play shows and with kids, we do things with imagination.

Polly: We hope we're writing songs that are folky, smart, and weird. We can sing loud in the car, but don't they also deserve more fundamental, thoughtful things of their own?

Andrew: I had Fisher-Price "American Revolution" tapes and Polly had "Little Thinker Tapes," with a host who'd say things like, "let's go to Mars!"

Polly: They were lots of character-based stuff. We wanted something that was more based on our relationships, something that honored that [type of recording].

Andrew: "Ghostbusters" [from Odds and Ends] was more of an Ear Snacks prototype.

Polly: You know, the podcast is not wholly different from five families asking us to do an album. We made two episodes, but families wrote us asking to be in the show. [Episode 3 is now out.] It's like doing a half-album every month. We have high standards.

Andrew: The only thing close in the category is Story Pirates.

Polly: The top podcasts list is a very confusing place. Sesame Street, lots of parenting podcasts. Some are original, but there are also podcasts that are rebroadcasts of Nick[elodeon] and Disney shows. I understand why that is...

I don't really know what the end goal is. It's really fun for kids -- some of them are conducting the interviews with parents. And if that's all, that's great. We hope we make it a year.

What's next?

Polly: We want to finish the season, and we're recording the next album -- we're not going to wait five years.

Andrew: This will be a coherent concept album.

Polly: We're having lots of fun with it... Digital projects with Nick in the next year or two. Shows booked through the end of the year.

Andrew: And swimming lessons.

Photo credits: Josh Piha