LUCKY DIAZ AND THE FAMILY JAM BAND “A POTLUCK” Like a well stocked jukebox being funneled (somehow) through a Lite Brite, Lucky Diaz’ music is colorful and childlike. But not at all square. Although maybe slightly cubist. The nine songs and spoken word bookends of “A Potluck” pair a mid-western […]
RENEE & JEREMY “A LITTLE LOVE” A covers album. Yeah, I know. I feel pretty much the same way. Seems like tiptoeing through the tulips for wrinkled dudes like Manilow, Stewart, and Sir Paul – a way to keep one hand inside the wallets of their, um, more mature audiences […]
THE POP UPS “RADIO JUNGLE” It is awfully tempting to, when hearing a new album from a band you already have an affinity for, and hearing it as both fan and critic, to judge it solely or at least most prominently and immediately on a single, very rudimentary criteria: is […]
WE KIDS ROCK “STINK BUG” “Stink Bug” isn’t the best of the five songs on the impressive new We Kids Rock “5 Songs…” EP, but with temperatures hovering at or near 60 degrees as the non-exactly-a-real-winter thaw begins in earnest here on the Eastern seaboard, the critters who didn’t seem […]
I loves me some kindie collaborations, and while this new one between two of the funkier rock-n-roll outfits for tots lays on the message a bit too thick for my tastes, it is still a pretty damn good tune. The OK City drums-n-organ duo Sugar Free Allstars picked Seattle’s Recess […]
BILL HARLEY “HIGH DIVE” In this house, it is always a special occasion when Bill Harley releases a new album. His stories and songs are as cherished by my kids as their cuddliest stuffed animals and most well-thumbed books. Harley’s latest, “High Dive”, starts strong with the title track story-song […]
THE HAPPY RACERS “READY SET GO” An opening guitar lick borrowed from one of John Mayer’s palaces of seduction turns an endearing, no-more-monsters-at-bedtime tune into the most Triple A-commercial-radio ready kindie song to come along in ages. “Lovabye Dragon” is the kind of hit that, had “Ready Set Go” been […]
LORI HENRIQUES “OUTSIDE MY DOOR” Way way back in time, in 2004, when we had our first child, the Mrs. and I didn’t know of Dan Zanes, of They Might Be Giants (children’s division), or of any acts in the since-coined micro-genre of kindie music. I also didn’t know, at […]
