They’ve spawned. Satisfied with their dominance of American popular culture for a while, the Zhu Zhu Pets want more. More! This week, the Zhu Zhu Pets begin their multimedia empire in earnest. They’re going to have a float at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. And on that float will be pop singer Savannah Outen, a YouTube star and Radio Disney sensation. Outen will be singing songs (with Zhu Zhu Pets and 130 hand-picked young singers) from the Zhu Zhu Pets new animated movie The Quest for Zhu, which stars a bunch of Zhu Zhu Pet characters singing familiar, kid-friendly pop and rock classics, along with originals by Outen and American Idol finalist Thia Megia. And that’s the music part of the media phenomenon: the soundtrack to Quest for Zhu.

I know, I know. Likable, chubby, CGI rodents with high pitched voices performing “What I Like About You,” “Celebration,” “Let’s Groove” and “ABC.” Yes, I know. It’s…familiar. But song choice is important. The Chipmunks, in their latest incarnation, which is what matters to you, the parent of a child, are horrible. The boy Chipmunks are smug and crass. The girl Chipmunks are sexed-up, lazy girl stereotypes. I’d much rather hear the Zhu Zhu Pets sing “ABC,” a song originally sung by children, to children, then hear the Chippettes tell their boyfriends to put a ring on it. Plus Outen and Megia have nice voices, and know their strengths: there’s nothing wrong with innocuous kiddie-pop, and something musical for kids to have of their very own.

It’s not every day that a kids record comes to your desk with a song called “River of Blood.” Of course, the song is about your circulatory system, and the chorus is catchy all get out. “The River of Blood keeps on flowin’ / The River of Blood keeps on going.”

Musically, the band displays a mix of old school traditional music of ragtime, blues, jazz, swing and numerous others. “The Golem” is a klezmer-style song that will have you singing “Listen to the big feet go bum! bum! That’s the sound of the Golem when he comes” at random parts of the day. The chorus is so good, it gets stuck in your head after the first listen.

Songs about Abigail Adams, Marie Curie and Sacagawea are other topics included on Strange Dees, Indeed. Ever heard of Phineas Gage before? Neither had I, but that didn’t stop the Dees from writing a song about him. Cliff Notes version: He survived an accident in which a large iron rod was driven completely through his head, destroying much of his brain’s left frontal lobe.  Like I said, not your typical kids’ music fare.

Strange Dees, Indeed is different, unique and impossible not to fall in love with.

This album is geared towards older kids; most of the lyrical content will fly over the head of kids under four years old. Curious about how these songs came about and interested in helping educate your kids on the topics covered in the songs? Read with your kids, straight from the band, plus lyrics right here.

Buy the new CD, straight from their site. Listen to the tracks below.

The Chickadees, thankfully, are not that kind of kids’ music. It’s a passion project from singer/songwriter Mary Karlzen (who had a great album come out in 1995 called Yelling at Mary) who, has followed the career path of other indie rock cult faves Dan Zanes and Ralph Covert and gone into kiddie entertainment. Karlzen’s approach is more than just good music kids can call their own—the Chickadees (a fairly clever name, as the band is entirely female) profess an environmentalist message. All kids are inherently environmentalists; they love animals and they love being outside. Pop culture and entertainment can help solidify those feelings, and that’s what the Chickadees aimed to do with their second album, The Froggy Hop.

It’s a pleasant country folk romp, a good fit for songs about being outside. The Froggy Hop has two main themes: how animals are amazing (“Tiny Little Caterpillar,” “Animal Babies”), and save the planet, kids (“Planet Protectors,” “Reduce, Recycle & Reuse”). A little didactic? Sure, but you can’t be subtle about important stuff with pre-schoolers. In that regard, the Chickadees are like Rage Against the Machine, except friendly, approachable, and concerned more with pollution than Zapatistas.

For all their problems, though, Leeds’ songs succeed more often than not, simply by virtue of the fact that she’s a really smart songwriter with a beautiful voice — and that’s the case once again with her new album, What a Zoo!, which takes listeners on a 14-track rundown of various members of the animal kingdom. Some of her subjects are unsurprising (whales, hummingbirds, butterflies), but it’s a sign of Leeds’ cleverness that she works in songs about animals who don’t get a lot of musical love — which is impressive, given just how many kindie songs are about animals. Clams? Manatees? Possums? For goodness’ sake, tofurkey? They’re all part of Joanie Leeds’ zoo. She even makes room for a pair of covers: A fresh rearrangement of “Froggy Went A-Courtin’” (featuring a rap from Secret Agent 23 Skidoo) and an album-closing round of “Wimoweh.”

If Leeds’ lyrical outlook benefits from her unique perspective, the album’s main musical asset is her strong grasp of pop songwriting fundamentals. These are simply catchy songs, and no matter how many times I found myself wishing she’d dial back the production, I never found them anything less than enjoyable. And again, Leeds can sing – even if she gilds her vocals with a little too much sugar for my taste, they have enough strength and substance to prove she doesn’t have to.

Though it’s probably too cute for kids in the post-kindergarten age group, What a Zoo! offers catchy, well-performed fun for young children and their families.

Related articles

• Rob Smith Can’t Say No: For the Kiddies, Part 3 (popdose.com)

Unfortunately, the execution is the problem with Stellar Jazz Safari. Made in the Shade is clearly a solid band, and it’s a genuine pleasure to hear real jazz this cleanly produced, but they’ve taken a perfectly serviceable concept and smothered it in things it doesn’t need — like talking animal characters, annoyingly hammy narration, and sending the storyline into space for some odd reason. The between-song bits — and there are a lot of them — should help explain the music, and they do, but they also detract from what could have been a really enjoyable listening experience, primarily because they’re so corny. (Your leader on the safari is the trumpet-wielding Shader Gator; by the fifth or sixth track, I was having visions of turning him into a jacket.)

Is it terrible? Certainly not. It’s just hard not to wish that Made in the Shade had broadened its focus a little — Stellar Jazz Safari could have been fun for the whole family, but as it is, its strongest appeal will be to younger kids who are interested in learning more about jazz, and they don’t need pandering. On the band’s next safari, they should relax a little, and trust the music to do more of the talking.

Anchoring a three-piece combo that features himself on “guitars and sundries,” Craig Kew on bass, and Terry Brock on violin, Riley serves up simple, affectionate takes on public domain favorites, running between two and four minutes apiece. It all adds up to a very quick listen — it’s over in less than half an hour — but it’s still an interesting case study in just how deeply kindie artists rely on folk music. If you’ve built a decent-sized collection of family music, you probably own more versions of “Froggy Went A-Courtin’” or “Camptown Races” than you can count, and you may not even notice when an artist like, say, Caspar Babypants covers a traditional number like “Shoo Fly” or “The Cuckoo.”

Riley isn’t offering an explicit history lesson here, and in fact you can listen to Funky Folk without thinking about anything at all — it makes fine background music — but a glance at the CD’s back cover demonstrates the level of thought that went into his selections. He does include “Froggy” and “Camptown,” as well as “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad,” “Frere Jacques” and “Allouette,” but he also works in some Dvorak (the lovely “Largo,” inspired by the composer’s trip to America) and Liszt (“Liebestraum”). The cumulative effect is one of separate strands entwining to create a beautiful whole — which is what music is really all about in the first place, isn’t it?

Related articles

• Rob Smith Can’t Say No: For the Kiddies, Part 3 (popdose.com)
• CD Review: Caspar Babypants, “This Is Fun!” (dadnabbit.com)

Offering a dozen tracks of jazzy, acoustic-based pop, topped off with sun-kissed melodies and delightfully charming female vocals, Cat and a Bird is kind of like a kindie-friendly version of Swing Out Sister mashed up with, I don’t know, Leon Redbone or something — only with sharper hooks and extra helpings of tongue-in-cheek humor. The whole thing sounds like a smile on a warm spring day, and given that I’m writing this while surrounded by hard-packed mid-March New Hampshire snow, you can probably guess how much I appreciate listening to it.

It is, in a word, wonderful, and I can’t stop listening to it. (Not that I’d stop if they didn’t, but my kids love it too.) The arrangements are fairly sophisticated for family music (and I’m not complaining), but the lyrics are decidedly kid-friendly; each track tells a different animal-centric tale, from “Bee Jive” to “Butterfly,” “Night Owl,” and the insanely catchy “150 Year Old Surfer Turtle” (listen to it once and then try and get it out of your brain — I dare you). Check out the lyrics, along with adorable illustrations, at the Cat and a Bird website.

I say “fitting” because Songs from a Zulu Farm is a children’s album, at least nominally speaking; it’s a collection of traditional songs that Ladysmith’s members remember from their youth, and while they haven’t released a single album that wouldn’t be appropriate for kids — and while it’s extremely unlikely your children will be familiar with songs like “Imbongolo” or “Ntulube” — there’s an increased sense of the group’s trademark childlike joy in these songs that culminates with the playful closing track, “Old MacDonald Zulu Style.”

If your kids aren’t accustomed to hearing vocal music, or lyrics they can’t understand, they may approach Songs from a Zulu Farm warily. My daughter, for one, took awhile to warm up to it; at first, she just couldn’t get past the fact that she didn’t know what was happening in the songs. But she eventually came around, and that’s part of what kids’ music is all about — giving parents an opportunity to act as a gateway into new sounds for our children. All of what they hear doesn’t have to be — shouldn’t be — the stuff they’re accustomed to, and often, as with Songs from a Zulu Farm, expanding their horizons helps reinforce the beautiful universality of the language of music. It’s a journey we should all take more often.

Visit Ladysmith Black Mambazo’s Facebook page to hear tracks from Zulu Farm, as well as watch videos (including the behind-the-scenes electronic press kit).

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1. I love it; and
2. You should buy it now.

That’s really it. If you trust my judgment at all when it comes to family entertainment, just stop reading now and order copies of The Bestest of the Best for your family and your closest parent-type friends. Come back here later to thank me. (You’re welcome.)

If you need to know more for some reason, here it is: The Bestest of the Best culls a marvelous 20 tracks from the band’s previous six albums, and while they’ve expressed unreasonable modesty where their earlier stuff is concerned (they’re taking a pair of older titles out of print, which is what prompted Bestest), everything here hangs together brilliantly, from newer songs to re-recorded versions of older tracks to the marvelous “Buffalo Gals,” recorded with Elizabeth Mitchell for a charity compilation and making its first appearance on a Dog on Fleas CD.

It’s just terrific stuff — warm, gently whimsical, and packed with lyrical gems. Dog on Fleas’ music soothes (the heartwarming “Beautiful World,” which contains the brilliant line “God goes clamming and brings up a pearl / Beautiful world, beautiful world”), it makes you think (the jaunty “The Moon Song” compares our changing moods — and the ups and downs of our days — to “the waxing and the waning of the moon”), it makes you laugh (the times-tables-by-way-of-shouting “Twistification”), it brings a tear to your eye (the simply beautiful “Happy”).

Put simply, the band makes music about things that matter — about love, about family bonds, about respecting the world around us. They impart their messages without being preachy, and they perform without artifice; these are songs that sound like the work of people together in the same room. If I could buy a copy for everyone, I would.

The packaging is also every bit as basic (and basically awesome) as the musical contents — the disc comes in a black-and-white cardboard case that says COLOR ME! on the cover, a winking nod to the days when these songs were originally popular, a time when families would sit around their parlors and sing the hits of the day themselves rather than streaming them to their AirPlay-enabled devices. (Of course, the album is also available as an MP3 download, but you get the point.)

The Professor (a.k.a. Paul Silveria) won’t win any awards for his vocals, but that’s part of Old Time‘s charm — this is one-take, rough-hewn stuff, meant for clapping and singing along to, beautiful in its stark, uncommon simplicity. If your kids love Pete Seeger (and if they don’t, you aren’t doing your job), here’s another perfect addition to the family music library.