New Music: In Tents

I sometimes worry that my enthusiasm for Recess Monkey has reached a point of absurdity, but I come by it honestly: The Seattle "teacher-rockers" (as they are now both truthfully and marvelously billed) have long been our family's favorite kid-music band, one of the few that gets my wife as excited about a new release as the two boys are.

I mentioned a little while back that they had just such a new release coming up soon, and, well, here it is: In Tents, the band's eighth(!) album, this one themed around circuses. It took just one listen at our house to see that it more than meets the high standards set by Recess Monkey's previous seven: Within minutes, both of our sons were hopping around the room to "Popcorn" (still their favorite off the album...though "Human Cannonball" and "Odditorium" are pretty close, come to think of it...and "Bouncy House"...OK, I'll stop).

The band's sound is astonishingly tight, as always, and the trio continues to push at their own musical boundaries, as they've done with each new album, experimenting with new sounds and instruments and even production techniques. (They're helped along this time in that last respect by the producer of In Tents, the ubiquitous Dean Jones.)

In fact, as Stefan Shepherd of the indispensible kids'-music site Zooglobble wrote in his review of the album, it feels absurd to burden any band by calling them the "Beatles of children's music"...and yet, with every one of their albums, it becomes harder and harder to avoid using just that phrase. They are most certainly the Fab...uh, Three of kids' music in our household.

I should also mention once more that they are a great band to see live with your kids, and that there are opportunities on both coasts to do so in the immediate future: In their hometown of Seattle, they're playing a bunch of shows to celebrate the release of In Tents with a real, live circus, Teatro ZinZanni; there are four of those shows left, on June 23 and 24, and July 14 and 15. (The show looks fantastic—for a taste, check out the full-length video below that Recess Monkey has put on YouTube.)

And for those of us on the East Coast, well, we don't get the circus, but we get several shots at Recess Monkey themselves: a free morning show on July 24 at NYC Summerstage in Rufus King Park in Queens; two admission shows on July 24 and 25 at 2 p.m. at the Long Island Children's Museum in Garden City; and another free outdoor morning show on July 26 in Madison Square Park in Manhattan at 10:30 a.m. My boys would be the first to tell you they're well worth the trip!



[Cover image courtesy of Recess Monkey]

New Music: Invisible Friends

Dean Jones is everywhere. In the kindie-music scene, anyway: Producing albums by leading lights of the genre like Recess Monkey, The Deedle Deedle Dees, and Elizabeth Mitchell, as well as the wonderful Many Hands kids'-music compilation, which has raised more than $60,000 for Haiti earthquake relief to date. (He also collaborated with folk-rock band the Felice Brothers on a solo kids' album of his own, Rock, Paper, Scissors, back in 2010.)

But somehow, amid all that, Jones is still also the frontman of a leading-light kindie band of his own, Dog on Fleas, whose seventh CD, Invisible Friends, just came out. It's another toe-tapping, dance-inducing pleasure all the way through its 16 tracks, from the catchy "Treehouse" and the sweet, Paul Simon–esque "Fortunate Mistake" to the reggae-tinged "Charm Them Birdies."

The whole album is equally diverse in its influences, which range from late Talking Heads to Jack Johnson and Dan Zanes to both the adult and kid albums of They Might Be Giants to Deee-Lite to...is that Nino Rota? Like the prior Dog on Fleas albums, it's all upbeat and lots of fun for kids and parents alike.

And those kids and parents from the area around lower New York state will have a few chances to see Dog on Fleas live in June—first at the official party for this very CD on June 9 in the band's hometown of Rosendale; then on June 16 at the massive Clearwater Festival in Croton-on-Hudson (hey, that's my hometown!); and finally in what I suppose must be one of all kindie music's hometowns, Brooklyn, at Albee Square Park on June 28.

[Cover image courtesy of Dog on Fleas]