Itty-Bitty Review: I Believe in Little Things - Diana Panton

I'm surprised there aren't more albums like Diana Panton's I Believe in Little Things. Given that jazz often takes classic songs and standards as the basis for creating something entirely new, why haven't jazz musicians devoted more attention to classic kids' songs?

On her new album, the Canadian jazz singer Panton doesn't reach all the way back to "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" and "Mary Had a Little Lamb," but instead uses classic twentieth century songs written for kids' entertainment as her starting point. So she turns to Sesame Street songwriter Joe Raposo, Kenneth Ascher and Paul Williams' songs from The Muppet Movie, and some Disney, among others. Panton's crystal-clear voice is a delight to listen to, with her backing musicians (primarily Reg Schwager on guitar and Don Thompson on bass, piano, and vibraphone) providing a subtle background from which her voice shines without being brassy, which would serve these songs poorly. As lovely as the renditions are, the musicians explore the songs to a point that some listeners with short attention spans may drift off ("When You Wish Upon a Star" clocks in at nearly six minutes). As a result, I'll peg the 55-minute album's target age range as ages 5 and up.

I hesitate to call this "kindie" or "kids music" -- remove the delightful album art by Jacqui Lee and replace it with abstract shapes or stylish pictures of Panton and her band, and it's a tossup as to whether it'd be filed in "children's music" or "jazz." Having said that, the answer to that question is probably a tossup under the current album art as well and probably irrelevant -- it's an album kids and adults are both likely to enjoy settling down with. Recommended.

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

Itty-Bitty Review: Meet You By the Moon - The Que Pastas

The Texas-based band The Que Pastas started out as a somewhat jokier band. (They also started out as a Colorado-based band, but that's an entirely different story.) Over time, while they haven't exactly dropped their sense of humor, chief Pastas Gene Davis and Simon Flory have added a healthy dose of heart to their songs.

Meet You By the Moon, their recently-released second full-length album, is a major step forward for the band, a solid collection of Americana with touches of the Beatles and the third grade cutup. The band's always had a bit of Americana sound, but with producer Salim Nourallah (Old 97s, Rhett Miller, among others) at the helm, it's brought more to the fore in sound, attitude, and instrumentation. There's the stomp of "Llama," the hint of zydeco on the reading anthem "Book Lion," and the fiddle accents on the suffused-with-heart "Saturday Morning." And for every jokey song like "Common Denominator" (a re-recorded version of an early demo track), there's a new song like "Helen's Song," written from the perspective of a parent looking forward to future awesome events in their child's life (e.g., first corn dog at the State Fair).

The 26-minute album is most appropriate for kids ages 4 through 8. While the band's fans who grew up appreciating the band's outgoing attitude with a touch of class clown in their songs will still find songs to scratch that itch, wearing more heart on their sleeve will hopefully expand their audience further. Definitely recommended.

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

Itty-Bitty Review: I Chew - Hullabaloo

I don't know if practice makes perfect, but it usually helps things considerably. When you write a song a day for a month as Steve Denyes of San Diego's Hullabaloo did last year, not all the songs are going to be keepers, but the songwriting muscle will be stronger at the end than at the beginning.

For the band's latest album I Chew, Denyes (along with bandmate Brendan Kremer and Shawn Rohlf) took the best of the bunch, added a handful of new songs, and recorded them in their familiar simple folk-roots style. The result is a collection of 16 songs that cover a surprisingly broad range of styles in its 21 minutes. Silly songs like the nonpartisansong "Senator John Arthur Clydesdale III" bump up against the political "I Wear Pink," which gently makes the apparently still controversial argument that boys can wear pink and play with dolls. (I know! But Denyes sings of actual pushback he received.) "Air-O-Plane" is a sequel in many ways to Woody Guthrie's "Car Car" and "Aeroplane," while "I Can't Let It Go" speaks just as much to the 40-year-old obsessives as the 14-month old ones. There's a hint of Shel Silverstein, too, in "Boring," not to mention the spoken word "Worm with Wings." (The tracks will be most appropriate for kids ages 3 through 7.)

Denyes didn't just have a month to hone his songwriting -- he's been playing for kids for more than a decade. And slowly but surely, he's become one of kindie's better songwriters, a living argument in favor of consistency while occasionally mixing things up (by, say, writing a song a day). As he sings about in "Day 16," start trying to write a song, and eventually you'll have a song. Do it often enough, and some of it will end up pretty good. Definitely recommended.

Podcast Review: Ear Snacks

Ear Snacks logo cover

Well, with this the plural in "Podcast Reviews Are Now a Thing Here" is in fact true.

The Los Angeles-based kindie duo Andrew and Polly first became known to the kids music world for their melodic and occasionally quirky music, but it's their podcast Ear Snacks that is, I think, their most forward-thinking creative effort for audiences of kids.

They call it a "radical new podcast for kids," and while I tend not to believe most descriptions that try to hype the individuality of the product, in this case I think the phrase fits. Each episode is loosely structured around a single theme -- the most recent one, Episode 9, is "Rain," but they've also covered beeps, pairs, disguises, balls, and more. The duo (married, with a kid of their own) tackle the topic by talking with one another, playing audio clips of kids talking about it, talking with adult experts, and playing music. The adults they talk with are sometimes scientists, but sometimes they're just people with a hobbyist's interest (like Polly's father or a friend who just really digs seahorses). The music, well, as you'd expect, it's really good. (The song at the end of the "Rain" podcast is one of the best kids' songs you'll hear this year.) And all of this is wrapped into a single, well-edited whole.

The podcast is most appropriate for kids ages 3 through 7. The iTunes link for the show is here (you can find it elsewhere, of course, including at the podcast's main page above). Episodes are roughly 15-20 minutes in length, and are released roughly monthly. (Sometimes there are much shorter bonus episodes released in between the main releases.) Aside from a suggestion of supporting the show, perhaps by buying a t-shirt, the show is ad-free.

I recently called Ear Snacks a half-absurdist podcast for kids, and I stand by that assessment. Yes, it features kids, and curious ones at that, and that's nothing new, but its blend of music and its deemphasis on straight-forward storytelling is certainly unique for the emerging genre. It's a hoot.

Review: Explorer of the World - Frances England

Frances England didn’t plan on becoming a kids musician when she made her first album more than a decade ago. She just wanted to contribute something to her son’s preschool fundraiser, and wrote songs for a homegrown CD while supervising her son’s baths. But that album’s popularity far surpassed the small world of that San Francisco school. Last Friday she officially released her fifth album for families, Explorer of the World.

As the album title suggests, England is concerned with themes of exploration, observation, and investigation. But rather than traveling long distances, she pays close attention to the world literally outside her front door -- walking her dog around her neighborhood, for example, noticing patterns and colors. She’s inspired as much by visual artists like Wendy McNaughton and Keri Smith as by musicians, and like those artists, she encourages her listeners to pay attention to the art around them daily.

England’s music isn’t as shiny and poppy as that of her peers, but this new album is even more experimental than most kids music. Instead of using chord progressions as the jumping-off point for songs, on some tracks she used field recordings she made walking around San Francisco. “City Don’t Sleep,” for example, started with recordings from late-night walks along North Beach.

Co-producers Dean Jones and Dave Winer bring a lot of different perspectives in terms of the musical production, and the result is an album that vibrates as their approaches (Jones: earthy kitchen-sink sound; Winer: try-anything sonic collage and percussion) differ, but resonate with each other and with England.

I was trying to come up with the appropriate age range for the album, and while I'm going to put at ages 5 through 9, like much of England's more recent work, it's probably broader than that. Not for toddlers, perhaps, but also for kids older than 9, if you get them to sit down and really listen. (You can listen to this album -- along with the rest of her music -- here.)

Even though this album celebrates exploring her own backyard, Frances England is more interested in the process of keeping her eyes open to the world around her. In discovering her own neighborhood, she reminds the rest of us that we can do the same with our own streets and sidewalks. Highly recommended.

Review: Why? - They Might Be Giants

They Might Be Giants have been making clever and subversive pop music for more than 30 years. Late last year, they released their second album of 2015, but this one is for kids of all ages.

In the year 2002, They Might Be Giants did something thought to be a little crazy - they released an album for kids. That record, titled No!, was both a commercial and critical success, and sent the band down an unanticipated path as part-time kids’ music superstars. They then released 3 themed albums through Disney -- one each about letters numbers and science -- while continuing to make music for adults. If you’ve paid any attention to kids music over the past decade, you certainly have run across the band.

Six years after that last kids’ record, the band returned in late 2015 with a new kids’ music album. Free of a Disney collection, the new album is a spirited, free-form follow-up to No! appropriately titled Why?.

On the song “Out of a Tree,” everybody thinks it’s a disaster that an 8-year-old has gotten stuck in a tree... everyone, that is, except the adventurous 8-year-old himself. And while the album doesn’t have a specific theme, many songs celebrate kids’ independent streaks. Of course, sometimes that leads to decisions that aren’t the wisest in retrospect.

Despite the frustration the parent of such a kid might experience, a song like “Definition of Good” shows that sometimes moments of random curiosity spark warm family memories.

The freeform nature of the roughly 40-minute album makes it a little more difficult to nail down a specific target age range, but I'd peg it at about ages 4-10.

Many of the people the band sings about or to on this album question authority and explore the world in messy ways, coming up with answers to new questions. That attitude is useful for not only 30-year-old rock bands but also much younger listeners -- it’s what helps give me hope that the world’s problems can be tackled head-on.