Mind of my own - Frances England

Kindie rock that's mostly acoustic and sometimes folksy. It's gentle and almost delicate - the drums sound as if they're mostly played with brushes, and although these aren't lullabies Ms. England has a kind of lullaby voice. Having said that it is mostly upbeat in a very understated way, and there's the occasional almost lively track (like "Place in your heart" or "Vacation Delights").

The vocals are easy on the ear and there's some very capable guitar-playing. It's pretty melodic although a little lacking in hooks, and the lyrics can be hit-and-miss - some of the child's-perspective songs like "Cookies and Milk" aren't really convincing and others stray into adult-centric territory (like "Child teach me to be" and "Big heart") which I never really like on a kids record.

Not really blowing me away, but pretty good, and the song "Mind of my own" has been stuck in my head all afternoon.

The New Explorers Club - Flannery Brothers

Upbeat kindie rock from 2 American brothers. It genre-hops a bit, with a latin-sounding opener, reggae-lite "Kitchen floor" and the pirate-y (is "pirate" a genre? in kids music it seems to be) "Pirate or parrot". It's pretty danceable and the songs are pretty solid, with the occasional hint of Jonathan Richman, but, apart from the pirate song (and, as you know, I'm a total sucker for all things pirate), there's nothing really outstanding here.

This is fun! - Caspar Babypants

I wasn't crazy about Caspar Babypant's (AKA Chris Ballew from The Presidents of the USA) first kids album, but I'm digging this one. It's a mixture of originals and traditional tunes, sounding quite like, surprise surprise, The Presidents of the USA ... or what I remember of them anyway, must be 15 years ago now since I listened to one of their records (eek!)

Mostly the songs are pretty simple, but that's a virtue when they're also bouncy and quirky and fun and catchy enough to stick in my head - and I expect when I bring this home this evening they're going to make the kids dance. The lyrics keep making me smile - they're not self-consciously addressed to children, rather Chris Ballew just has a child-like view of the world (like Jonathan Richman) that is perfect for family-friendly music.

There's also a cover of Nirvana's "Sliver" - the one with the chorus "Grandma take me home" - and a quote from Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf" in the middle of "Buckeye Jim" that made me laugh out loud when I heard it. I like this. Recommended.

What are the odds? - Meredith LeVande

American kindie acoustic-guitar-playing singer-songwriter plus band. Fairly gentle singalong-y indie, occasionally bluesy and a little They Might Be Giants-ish some of the time, it's let down by a lacklustre recording. My kids like it and the songs are nearly all good, but I'd really like to hear them re-arranged and recorded with a bit more ZING.

Hello Children Everywhere

This is the best CD of "classic" children's songs available at the moment (that I know of), all in their original versions. It's got "Nellie the Elephant", "The Runaway Train", "The Teddy Bears' Picnic", "Gilly Gilly Ossenfeffer Katzenellenbogen by the Sea", "You’re a Pink Toothbrush" and many many more. One of the best sellers on the kids-tunes site.

Buy it, and other children's classic recordings, now on kids-tunes.com

Phineas and Ferb soundtrack

Shiny, commercial-sounding music from the cartoon (which, again, I have never seen). There's very little on here that wouldn't fit in on your local Top 40 radio station - it's mostly pop/rock with the occasional genre influence like the reggaeton beat and dancehall vocals in "Backyard beach", or "Perry the Platypus" which sounds a little like Johnny Rivers' "Secret Agent Man". The songs are all very competently put together and performed, but there's not much in the way of originality or real personality on here.

There's the occasional highlight, like "My goody two shoes brother" that sounds like it's from a crazy musical, "Chains on me" which I'm surprised Tom Waits hasn't sued them over, and the following hilarious lines in "Little brothers":

Even when you break my toys, you will always be my little brothers
Because you're younger, we're related, and you're boys

Isabelle and Heather like the livelier tunes well enough (all those girls want to do is dance), but it's really just too commercial for my taste.

Buy it now on Amazon

The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie: Music from the Movie and More...

The opening track on this is a disastrous cover of the Spongebob theme from Avril Lavigne, which very near put me off entirely. Fortunately it didn't, as the rest of the CD is (mostly) really good - good tunes from Wilco, Ween and Motorhead, and The Flaming Lips' fantastic "Spongebob and Patrick confront the psychic wall of energy" which is almost worth the price of admission on its own. Not quite as good overall as "Spongebob's greatest hits", but still worth your while.

Very soon I'm going to get some Spongebob CDs for the kids-tunes.com shop, but for now you can content yourself with the other kids film / tv music that I do have in stock or buy it on Amazon

Time out to rock - The Not-Its

The Not-Its are a Seattle-based band playing guitar-based kids rock music. Their singer was formerly in a band signed to Sub-Pop, and lots of other blogs love them ...

There's some good stuff on this, like the call-and-response and Pavement-y guitar melody of "Accidentally", the "la la la"s in "Change my Luck" and the horn section in "Cheetah the buffalo", but ... well, the band has a tendency to drag the beat, so everything sounds like it's slowing dooooown, and the singer's pitching tends to be a bit off (or sounds it to me, maybe it the backing vocals that are off?). Some bands can get away with this kind of thing (Pavement! White Stripes!) but, sorry The Not-Its, you can't. This puts me off to the extent that I can't really tell you whether the songs are actually good or not.

It's a shame, cos the one Not-Its song I know from the previous album has a cool chorus:



Buy it now on Amazon

Class of 3000

Music from the animated series "Class of 3000", which I have never seen. The music was written by André 3000 of Outkast (with K. Kendrick, don't know who he his) - it's funky and hip-hop-y and, well, Outkast-y with traces of Parliament. And jazzy without being boring. And adventurous and creative, wow, and fun. Man, this is fantastic, some of these songs could easily be hits of the magnitude of "Hey Ya". Haven't tried it on the kids yet, but it's going straight onto my grown-up playlist.

Buy it now on Amazon

Charlie Hope - World of Dreams

Charlie Hope's lullaby album - quiet arrangements, beautiful melodies, and Ms. Hope's gorgeous voice. The lyrics occasionally stray into saccharine territory - "You are loved and I'll watch you grow/I believe in you and everything you do" ... someone's going to cringe at that when he/she is a teenager - but given the genre and the fact that these are very well-written songs we'll forgive that.

I haven't used this to try and send anyone to sleep, as Heather finally seems to be past that stage, but it sounds like it'd be effective - "Rain Song" would fit right in on "On a starry night" which was on rotation at night in our house this time last year. If anyone reading this has tried it let me know and I'll report your findings here.

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory soundtrack

Some real children's classics on this, the soundtrack from the 1971 movie (all sung, incidentally, by the cast), like "Candy Man" and "Pure Imagination". There's also the slightly sinister Oompa-Loompa songs, instrumental pieces including the music from the bizarre/scary boat ride on the chocolate river and lots more. It's a real musical treasure trove, with little snippets of dialogue from the movie reminding me how amazing Gene Wilder was as Willy Wonka - so wistful and unhinged but basically kind.

Isabelle, although she has now forgotten the obsession she had with Wonka when she was 2, has really taken to it, asking me incessantly about the different children in the story, and about what's happening in the story as the music progresses. Recommended.

Spongebob's Greatest Hits

I love Spongebob, and the way his optimism and belief in his fellow sea-dwelling creature are never dented. I also love (most of) this CD. The words are a delight, like Plankton's verse in "F.U.N. song":

F is for fire that burns down the whole town
U is for URANIUM! BOMBS!
N is for NO SURVIVORS

Haha! And then Spongebob get him to try being nice, and he likes it :)

It's not breaking any new musical ground, I suppose, but it has its moments - like the detuned backing vocals in the "Goofy Goober Song", and the Zappa-esque guitar solo in "Goofy Goober Rock", and the Beach Boys-ish "Best day ever". Hmmm, maybe there's more to this than I thought ... anyway, this made Isabelle and Heather dance at the dinner table, and it puts a big grin on my face.

Mozart's Magnificent Voyage - Classical Kids

Another from classical kids in their story-with-classical-soundtrack format. Mozart is up against the deadline for finishing "The Magic Flute" because he's worried about his son Karl who's away in school. The 3 dream children from the opera are afraid of having their parts dropped, and want to talk to Karl to get him to convince his Dad to keep them in. Conveniently, the magic flying boat from the show activates itself and takes them to visit Karl, and then travels back and forward in time to give them a whistle stop tour of Mozart senior's life, ultimately resulting in a deeper understanding between father and son.

The music's good, of course (though I have to admit I'm not the world's biggest Mozart enthusiast) but the story is kinda preposterous - just a daft framing device for imparting facts about Mozart's like. Haven't tried it on Isabelle yet, but I didn't like it very much.

Peter and the Wolf - Prokofiev, narrated By Dame Edna Everage

If you've got one children's classical music record in your house, it's probably "Peter and the Wolf". If you don't, you should buy this one toot sweet. It's a great performance and Dame Edna does a cracking job of the narration - and in case you don't know the music, that's great too, melodic and very accessible with a cool story about a young boy outsmarting everyone.

Click here to listen to and hopefully buy it on www.kids-tunes.com

Bedtime Stories for Pirates - Captain Bogg and Salty

Captain Bogg and Crew's first album, 10 years old now, containing, well, pirate music. A little bit Pogues-y, a little bit gypsy-ish - just imagine for yourself the kind of music pirates might sing, and you're probably imagining it right. It's got a little bit more musical theatre about it than the other albums ("I'm a singing pirate" its quite Gilbert & Sullivan-ish) and actually sounds quite like a first album, but although it doesn't have as many danceable tunes as "Pegleg Tango" it's just as good in its own way. The kids dig it as much as I do and "SCUUUUUUUURVYYYYY!" has become a great catchphrase in the house.

Click here to buy its successor, "Pegleg Tango" on www.kids-tunes.com

I'm Me! - Charlie Hope

A collection of quiet-but-quietly-fun acoustic-y songs from woman with a really gorgeous voice. It's split about 50-50 between well-known songs (like Raffi's "Mr. Sun" and "10 in the bed") and originals. Of the covers I really love "Zoom zoom", which reminds me a little bit of Woody Guthrie's children's stuff in that it sounds like she's been recorded singing directly to one of her own children (complete with WHSSSSSSHHHHHCCCH vocal sound effects indicating the rocket blasting off). The originals are really good too - she knows how to put together a tune, and her lyrics are simple but good (again a little like Raffi).

My kids seldom express an interest in gentle music, but a lot of this is lively in its own subtle way, evidenced by Heather dancing to it all around the kitchen on Saturday. It dips a little at the end (by which I mean it gets a bit too quiet to really hold our attentions), but even so it's a good album and well worth checking out.

Tiny cool - Princess Katie and Racer Steve

Princess Katie and Racer Steve are a husband and wife duo and one of the new breed of American kindie bands, going for both girl and boy demographics judging by their name. The first song - a cool and very danceable salsa number with an ace brass section - is great, but after that it kinda goes astray. The lyrics tend to be from a grown-up rather than a kid's perspective, and can be quite cringey in places ("I'm on the stage rockin out/So I can see all the kids and I believe") and although they have some nice melodic turns here and there (like the chorus of "Shy") the parts never really add up to songs that grab me.

Here Comes Science - They Might Be Giants

The latest from TMBG, this one attempts to explain some fairly complex scientific ideas to kids like photosynthesis, elements, cells and The Scientific Method itself in language kids will understand. We're a very science-y household - me and Niamh met when studying science in university, and she's an actual working Scientist with a Ph.D. and everything (ooooo!) - so we were excited about this one. From my own perspective I was hoping it'd help stop me tripping myself up during my regular lengthy explanations of Everything to Isabelle, in response to questions like "Everything has something else inside it, doesn't it?".

The music, as you'd expect, is top notch quirky indie rock - maybe not quite as consistent as "Here Come the 123s", but the best ones are (I think) better. Not all the songs are actually educational - like Roy G. Biv, which it just a super-catchy excuse to personify the colours of the rainbow and make up some nonsense about him. Of the ones that are some that are pretty simple content-wise, like a list of the names of the planets, which are perfect for Isabelle, and while the more complicated stuff won't provide instant enlightenment to a 5-year old, the songs do provide great jumping-off points for talking about this stuff.

Like the other TBMG kids records there's a DVD of videos of the songs as part of the package. The videos on this are much slicker than "Here come the 123s", including "Electric car" which is one of the most gorgeous videos I've ever seen. Highly recommended.

The Wizard of Oz Soundtrack

Isabelle went through a mad Wizard of Oz stage when she was 3. We played countless games of Dorothy and Scarecrow, and she declared to anyone who'd listen "I'm obsessed with princesses, Power Rangers and Wizard of Oz".

The obsession with princesses is the only one that has persisted since (curse you Disney!), so I hadn't listened to this in a while until this morning. I was struck again by how good the music is - not just "Somewhere over the rainbow" (which was Isabelle's favourite song when she was around 4 months old), but "Ding dong the witch is dead", "If I only had a brain", "Follow the yellow brick road" and more. Despite that it was never really a hit in the house. It's a kind of odd album - the music is taken unedited from the film, so there's bits and pieces of songs scattered everywhere. "If I only had a heart/a brain/the nerve", for example, appears in a few fragments, one for each of Dorothy's companions. Other songs are similarly broken up, or, like all the little tunes the Munchkins sing to welcome Dorothy, extremely short ... I suppose what I'm getting at is that, good as the music is, the CD feels like an incomplete experience without the visuals.

Sing-Along Songs from Glasses Island - The Speks

The first Irish kids music act I've come across, this is a nursery rhyme CD containing many of the usual suspects, but played as (and in some cases set to) Irish traditional music - for example "Miss Polly had a dolly" is set to the tune of The Little Beggarman. It's refreshing to hear children's music sung in a Irish accent, and to hear some of the pre-school songs you get here that you don't tend to find on UK and US releases (like Michael Finnegan and The Scarecrow). It's well put-together by what sounds like proper trad musicians (flute, guitar, banjo, tin whistle, fiddle, etc) with a great line in close harmonies.

I like it. Haven't tried it out on the kids yet, but I reckon they'll dig it too. You can listen to it on bandcamp here.