Z’s Music Monday: I’m From Barcelona - “Let Me Introduce My Friends”
“Please press my rec and play
’cause I want to save this moment
This will be my favourite song
This will be my favourite album…”
-I’m From Barcelona - “Rec & Play”
I find most “kids” music tooth-achingly annoying. It tends to be oversimplified versions of traditional or classic top 40 songs performed by sub-par musicians or saccharine sweet Disney creations designed to sell some sort of merchandise line. The thing is, however, that kids really seem like this bold, major chords and primary colors style of music and they’re not particularly bothered about whether or not the musicians that are playing it are talented. So what’s the music snob parent to do? I’ve already found myself veering off toward Victorian Father declarations, so I know that it’s a slippery slope towards fascist fathering for me. Up until now, I’ve sort of been thrusting music upon Z – and to my credit, he seems to like it. But I realized last week while his mother was playing him Abba and Madonna, that I am not going to be able to completely control what Z hears and someday he is going to come home and ask for the soundtrack to the “Little Mermaid”.
Fortunately, I seem to not be alone in this struggle to find quality music that kids will really enjoy - it is in fact a growing market. Wacky alternative legends They Might Be Giants
The other option is serendipitous child-friendly discoveries and that is where “I’m From Barcelona” comes in to the story. They are an apparently geographically confused Swedish folk-pop group boasting 29 members. They employ an eclectically strange mix of instruments in making their peculiar brand of sunny pop music which lies somewhere between fellow Swedes Peter, Bjorn and John and the similarly sized Polyphonic Spree. They are remarkably tight for having so many band members and while their debut LP “Let Me Introduce My Friends” has been met with mixed reviews, there is something infectiously hypnotic about this music that you would have to be a complete curmudgeon (or Coke Machine Glow reviewer) not to enjoy.
I got this album from my young Scottish friend (and apparently BFF) and though it took me a while to warm to it, one morning while walking the dog it just got to me. It was a bright autumn morning and I’m From Barcelona’s sunshine, daydream choruses and repetitive, nearly twee choruses just broke through my own curmudgeonly mood. By the end of the walk, I was singing along:
“I have built a treehouse
I have built a treehouse
Nobody can see us
it’s a you and me house…”
There’s nothing particularly groundbreaking about “I’m From Barcelona”. The Beach Boys, The Monkees, and numerous other groups have done their style of shiny, happy pop music. The lyrics are slightly hackneyed and The Polyphonic Spree, and to a certain extent the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, have done the cultish horde approach to popular music. But I’m From Barcelona do have something going for them. Their euphoria is contagious and they spread it by being very good at what they do. In “We’re From Barcelona” they promise:
“We’ll aim for the stars
We’ll aim for your heart when the night comes
And we’ll bring you love
You’ll be one of us when the night comes…”
And after playing this album through twice on Sunday, I certainly felt like one of them. Z absolutely loved this album, grinning and cooing through almost all the songs. He loved it so much that he got a little bit stroppy when I turned it off. I’m From Barcelona is full of bright sunshiny pop licks, major chords and soaring harmonies. It is easy music to sing along to, which makes it fun for me as well. And they seem to have their tongue lodged firmly enough in their cheek to garner some indie credibility.
Z liked all the songs, so I’m featuring two of my favorites - “Collection of Stamps” is a great tune for a former philatelist, and “Treehouse” is just a wonderful sing-a-long number. If you’ve got kids, and a similar snobbery to yours truly, this album is a great choice. “Let Me Introduce My Friends” is available from Amazon
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Popularity: 13% [?]
I was in lab one day, and someone was telling me that the Jack Johnson soundtrack for “Curious George” was excellent. Of course, this particular persons taste in music doesn’t quite mesh with mine. I checked it out from the local library and I did like it. Nothing ground breaking, and sounded very much like the beach bum music Jack is known for. I did find it highly fun and a being the “Curous George” soundtrack, very much a kid’s album.
26 Nov 2007 at 6:16 pm
my favourite lyrics from IFB: http://wakeupitstuesday.blogspot.com/2007/08/im-from-barcelona.html
also for all you immunologists out there, on Chicken Pox:
“You can’t have it once you’ve had it”
(doo doo doo, doo doo doo doo I have in my head, damn their songs are contagious)
I love the way they just sing about ordianry stuff, no classy metaphors, unless you’re looking hard. just stuff about collecting stamps, building tree houses, childhood illnesses and oversleeping. coolio.
26 Nov 2007 at 7:52 pm
Chris, here’s a link for a really great kid’s collection of music: Wee Sing
My grand nephew loves it…the link is to Amazon in the UK.
26 Nov 2007 at 9:19 pm
We didn’t bother much with children’s music when our kid was little — we just ignored it and played the stuff that we liked, and (as I’ve mentioned her previously) some of it made enough of an impression on our wee one that even though she is all growed up, she still loves some of those songs from her nursery. The trouble is, most of the stuff written for kids is really stupid — it’s like the authors are getting stuck at the kids’ intellectual level. I don’t understand it, really — in other forms of entertainment, like cartoons, books, and movies, the stuff we write for kids has something to entertain the kids, but also stuff that they might not “get” until they’re much older — bones tossed to us grown ups so that we can stomach all this pop culture for kids. Why can’t we do that with music, too?
I listened to the Barenaked Ladies “I Met a Bear” song, and it just annoyed me. It’s too simple musically and lyrically, and gives little to distract me from the heavy (and annoying) thumping of the bass drum and noisy cacophony of instruments, so even though I usually love the BNL, I had to turn it off before the song was over. They just let themselves be dragged down to the child’s level, instead of playing sophisticated music while figuring out how to make it accessible to children. Maybe the other tracks are better?
And example of how, I think, it should be done is Jerry Garcia and David Grisman’s “Not For Kids Only,” which takes simple children’s songs and makes them beautiful.
That’s about the only “children’s” CD I was able to stomach when my kid was a kid. Well, that and Tubby the Tuba (MUST be the Danny Kaye version!), but I plucked that one out of my own childhood, so there was some sentimental motivation there as well.
27 Nov 2007 at 2:03 am
That’s great! I loved They Might Be Giants when I was a teenager, and I sing/play their songs for the kids a lot. I’m not big on their kids music, though. These guys remind me a lot of them. Thanks for sharing
27 Nov 2007 at 4:02 pm