Video: "Here and Now" - Renee & Jeremy (World Premiere!)

Whole Lotta Love album cover

It’s been awhile since we’ve heard from the Southern California duo Renee & Jeremy. While both Renee Stahl and Jeremy Toback made music in the meantime, particularly Renee with a couple of well-received albums with a series of musical partners (including Toback) under the Renee & Friends moniker, it’s been nearly a decade since the duo last released an album together.

But the memories of parents sitting in quiet rooms with their young ones don’t fade easily. Their first two albums in particular — It’s a Big World and C’mon — were in constant rotation in Little Boy Blue’s preschool years in the Zooglobble household. Those albums were followed in 2012 by a holiday-themed album and an album of covers called A Little Love which showcased the duo’s lovely harmonies on often surprising arrangements of modern classic pop and rock songs.

Luckily for those families with long memories (and for families who might not have even been families nine years ago, R&J are back with a new album next week! It’s called Whole Lotta Love and it’s the spiritual successor to A Little Love as it’s another album of (almost entirely) covers. I’ve enjoyed their first two singles from the album, their versions of the Pixies’ “Where Is My Mind?” and Guns ‘n’ Roses’ “Sweet Child ‘O Mine” (the latter a refreshingly different take on the song), and judging by the YouTube comments (I know, never read the comments), their are lots of families who are eager for the duo’s return.

Renee Stahl and Jeremy Toback standing in a field

The new album dips from the same well of intriguing covers A Little Love dipped from, with a cover of MGMT’s “Kids,” for example, sitting alongside one of Sly and the Family Stone’s “Everyday People.” (I particularly enjoyed the leadoff track, a take on INXS’ “Don’t Change.”)

But there’s one original song on the album, “Here and Now,” and I’m glad I get to world premiere the video for that song. The song itself considers the impermanence of things and the importance of being present. (It’s not a Buddhist song… but I think a lot of Buddhists would recognize many of the concepts here.) The video, directed by Ron Hamad, a commercial and film director and friends with the duo, captures the mood and lyrics well, with Renee and Jeremy walking through abandoned buildings amidst the Salton Sea. Toback says the video shoot consisted of just the three of them plus director of photography Wes Cardino “chasing magic,” in Hamad’s phrase. The ending scene under an amazingly glowing moon, happened by accident, they report. Like much of Renee & Jeremy’s music, the video’s a little mesmerizing.

Again, Whole Lotta Love is out next week! Having listened to it all, I know that if your family still grooves to the music they made before, they will dig this, too.

Renee & Jeremy - “Here and Now” [YouTube]

Photo credit: Stuart Burton

Review: Beatles Baby - Caspar Babypants

Caspar Babypants Beatles Baby album cover

Chris Ballew works fast.  Diligently, to be sure, but fast.  Beatles Baby is his tenth Caspar Babypants album in less than 6 years, and that's on top of his work with the Presidents of the United States of America and his new efforts in the world of ambient music.

Beatles Baby arrives this Friday, almost 2 years to the day after Ballew's first set of Beatles covers, the search-engine-challenging-in-retrospect-titled Baby Beatles.  As with its predecessor, its value in a world in which few if any Beatles covers are truly necessary is in its nimble and somewhat pared-down approach to the songs.

Many of the originals' signature touches remain -- Billy Shears gets his shout-out on the transition from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" to "With a Little Help From My Friends" at the start of the album, or the driving bass line in "Lady Madonna."  Also nifty is the reprise of "Sgt. Pepper's" near the end (again, just like the original) and the transition from "Golden Slumbers" to "The End" from Abbey Road (sorry, fans, of "Carry That Weight" -- that gets elided out).  In some cases, like on "Drive My Car," the simple arrangements are let the melodies shine through even more, though Ballew also pulls out some orchestral synth arrangements.  For me, the most interesting tracks are those on which Ballew puts more of his stamp on the piece -- the mellow take on "The End" or the somewhat sped-up take on "Hey Jude," or the "cleaned-up" take on "Piggies" (though some fans of the original might miss the Fab Four's rougher take.

As with all of the Caspar Babypants music, the 49-minute album is most appropriate for kids ages 1 through 5, but of course the Beatles source material will automatically extend the high end of that age range another 80 or so years upward.

It's hard to make a case for this album as essential listening, for either Beatles fans or Caspar Babypants fans (and I count myself in both camps) -- why not listen to the original tracks from 50 years ago, and Ballew's written dozens of nifty pop songs for preschoolers in his own right?  But the clean and thoughtful stripped-down pop that's been a hallmark of the Babypants sound is every bit in evidence here as it's been in the past, and, married to one of the best songwriting duos of the 20th century, that's good enough for me.  Fast work, yes, but still just as good.  Recommended.

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

Review: Baby Beatles - Caspar Babypants

Let us first stipulate that there is no need for a Beatles cover album. The most popular rock band of all time, I have no doubt full cover albums number in the thousands (let alone individual songs, which probably approach if not exceed a million in recorded form).  The originals are permanently lodged in listeners' heads, often in a way that those listeners might wonder why anybody would even try improving upon them.

So, having said that, what of Caspar Babypants' latest collection of songs, Baby Beatles?  Is this just a cop-out, the kindie equivalent of digging into the Great American Songbook as a final musical cash grab?

Let's answer that last question with a firm "no."  As he noted in a recent essay, Chris Ballew, the Caspar Babypants mastermind, owes a great deal of his musical career to the inspiration of the Beatles.   It is better, perhaps, then to view this album as an homage to the lads from Liverpool and their songs, and in that regard Baby Beatles works quite nicely.

Ballew's entire Babypants career has been dedicated to making music for the youngest listeners -- while he certainly would welcome the kindergarteners who want to dance along, he's more interested in their younger siblings.  So while he's always been interested in stripped-down arrangements, that becomes even more important in a covers album where the tricky part is retaining the song's essence while giving the artist's own spin.  That's especially tough given how familiar some of these songs are. 

For the most part, I think Ballew succeeds, usually by making the songs nimble and as light as a feather, even more so than his previously-released songs.  "Here Comes the Sun" is peppier than the original, an incredibly joyful way to kick off the album (his version of "Ob La Di Ob La Da" with Jen Wood gives me similarly happy feelings).   I love the use of faint handclaps on "Birthday."  "Blackbird" hews very closely to the original, but why wouldn't it when it's so perfect to begin with?

I'm not enthused with every reworking -- "Yellow Submarine" and "Octopus's Garden" in particular sound too thin -- but the hits here exceed the misses.  And while some of the song choices seem odd and perhaps picked because of their ostensible ties to childhood ("Mother Nature's Son," "Little Child," "Cry Baby Cry"), those choices at least prevent the album from just being a recap of the Beatles' greatest hits.

The 20-song has a runtime of about 48 minutes and is most appropriate for kids ages 1 through 4, though, c'mon, it's the Beatles.  Just about everybody will recognize at least some of these tracks. 

I don't think any Beatles cover album is essential -- just listen to the originals -- but Baby Beatles is just different enough to hold the listeners' attention far more than they would for some random (often Muzak-inspired) cover.  There is no such thing as a bad Caspar Babypants album, and while I look forward to the next album of his original music and less-well-known traditional songs, this will do quite nicely in the meantime.  Definitely recommended.

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