Babble

It's hard to imagine just what kind of crowd Michael McKinnon, the erstwhile Canadian punk rocker behind Jam Toast, had in mind for this album.  It's a fun concept:  classic, three-chord punk with kid-appropriate lyrics.  The songs touch on the usual topics (pets, toys, sandboxes), and my son sure had fun hopping around and singing along with the easy-to-learn choruses.  Yet I kept thinking that the parents most likely to turn their kids on to punk would probably just start them on the real thing anyway.  It's not like "Blitzkreig Bop" is any more objectionable than a song called "Toys on the Dancefloor."  Then, halfway through "Hey Little Doggie" (the third song on the album about pets, by the way), I realized it was best suited for the kind of parents who wouldn't dare put a CD in their kids' hands unless it had only lyrics about puppy dogs.  And that's not very punk rock. — Matt Wood

Forget indoctrinating your tot with Mozart and Beethoven: developing an appreciation for the folksy simplicity of Woody Guthrie has got to be at least as good for them, and has less of the cultural imperialist overtones. This Smithsonian Folkways remaster is a seriously low-fi CD—it was originally released in 1956, but it sounds like it was recorded on a wax cylinder. My little guy doesn't mind the pops and scratches in the least; he just loves the songs. The lyrics and melodies are easy to remember, so Mommy and Daddy were singing along from the second listen, and they flow with such ease you can almost imagine Woody making them up on the spot to amuse little Arlo or lull him to sleep. Guthrie's childlike whine on songs such as "Why, Oh Why?" and "I Want My Milk (I Want it Now)" is both funny and dead-on. "Goodnight Little Darlin'" offers the surprisingly effective combination of a soporific rhythm and a hint of parental impatience with the resistant tot: "You've played, little darlin', all day," and it's time for Mommy to get a whiskey and watch grown-up movies with Daddy, so go to sleep!   — Jessica Bennett

"Mommy? Noise-a-break?" is how my twenty-one-month-old daughter asks to listen to her favorite track on Play, Mudhoney's crunching toddler anthem "I Like To Make Noise." This is one of those albums that parents should have no shame in displaying prominently, owing to a lively variety of well-chosen chestnuts and fresh originals by indie rock's glitterati. Mary Timony's frenetic, rockabillyish "Clap Your Hands" is a re-imagined "If You're Happy And You Know It." The lilting horns, jingle bells, and perfect diction of Mirah and Tara Jane O'Neill's performance of "Green Up Time" make this Kurt Weill classic surprisingly kindergarten-ready. Like most compilation albums, there's no singular musical vision holding the collection of songs together, but every song here is a charmer. — Sophie Brookover

For the money, you can't get a better preschool music deal than this: forty-two sing-a-long-ready tracks retailing for fifteen bucks (ten if you buy from iTunes and forego the bulky lyrics booklet). Granted, all of the songs clock in at under three minutes, but what kid wants to listen to a nursery rhyme that's as long as "Free Bird?" The recordings come from the early childhood music program at the venerable Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago, and the songs are a nice mix of the familiar ("Oh Susannah," "Polly Woddle Doodle" and their ilk — did you know that there were more verses to "Mary Had a Little Lamb?") with some international folk songs and a few Wiggleworms originals. Their straightforward acoustic renderings make even "Wheels on the Bus" a little less saccharine, a relief for those of us with toddlers who can't get enough of that particular blight on our musical landscape.— Jessica Bennett

It's always a treat when someone as appealingly childlike as Cory Cullinan (a.k.a. Doctor Noize, and the voice/musician behind musical monkey protégé Phineas McBoof) puts together an album for children. There's a lot packed into this fifteen-track CD, a rock opera that follows the adventures of the eponymous monkey. I have to admit that, after the first couple songs, I was relieved when Phineas grows tired of being the biggest star on the Island of Thelonious and escapes to what he thinks is a deserted island. Maybe it was just coming down from a strong cup of coffee, but that momentary rest felt like a nice deep breath. What follows is a fun romp through various types of music (funk, jive, country, classical, futuristic) as Phineas puts together a band, one member at a time, featuring all four corners of the world: The International Band of Misunderstood Geniuses. If you listen closely (in between fielding questions from your children, like, "Why was it 'increasingly difficult for them to go out in public?'") you'll hear elements of the Beatles, Mozart, and the Jaws theme. — Melissa Eva Miller