Various Artists - See YouOn The Moon

Mon 28th Aug, 2006 in Music Reviews

Parents – if your child must take control of the music in your home or car, then let it at least be by artists that you too can relate to. 

See You on the Moon is a compilation concept album conjured up by Canadian label – Paper Bag Records.  With a target audience of Indie/Alternative music parents and their young children, their aim was to create an album that ultimately screams ‘Just Say No to Wiggles’.

Let it be said that this album is not the first of its kind, many artists have taken on the ‘kiddie challenge’ before.  Alternative artists such as They Might Be Giants and Jack Johnson have done it with great success and prove that there is a market for such albums.  Here, all musicians step up from the Canadian music scene – small local artists such as Montag, Rembots and Junior Boys align themselves with bigger Canadian outfits such as Broken Social Scene, Sufjan Stevens, Hot Chip, and Great Lake Swimmers. See you on the Moon has adopted the right formula of fusing the genres and certianly there is a demand for such ventures. But does the chemistry work?

Whilst listening to the album you cannot help but feel that there may have been a couple of different memos going around the office during pre production on the aim of the album  Paper Bag Records describe this album as their ‘offering to kids all over the world’, but it has to be said that many of the songs here do not play as entirely kiddie friendly.  The subject matter and song lyrics are indeed appropriate, although the Fembots ‘Under the Bed’ tale of souls of the recently departed, and devils under the bed is probably not the right song that you want to be playing as you put your children to sleep. 

The presentation of a large proportion of the songs do not epitomise the essence of ‘child’, therefore are not likely to gain and keep the attention span of your three year old.  Your child may get up and dance to a couple of tracks, but will be breaking through the child locks on the cutlery draw well before Broken Social Scene’s ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’.  As an example, this song itself is so eerily slow and disjointed that it sounds as though Broken Social Scene were themselves puffing a little of that Magic Dragon whilst recording.

The kids will relate to and enjoy catchy tunes such as Alan Sparhawk’s ‘Be Nice to People with Lice’, Lederhosen Lubil & Kid Koala’s ‘Fruit Belt’, and the Great Lake Swimmers ‘See You on the Moon’.  However, the remainder of the performances sound as though they could belong on a Denton’s Musical Challenge cover album. In that the artists could have been given the songs to perform within an hour, and unfortunately missed the fact that their music was meant to involve the kids as well as their parents. They are not bad renditions of these songs, on the contrary they are quite well performed, however they missed the aim of the album.  Highlights that would appeal to the grown-ups listening to this CD include tracks by Junior Boys ‘Max’, Apostle of Hustle’s ‘24 Robbers’ and Hot Chip’s ‘I Can’t Wait Up’.

See You on the Moon is more likely to hit the musical rotation of adults who still have a bit of ‘kid’ in them, as opposed to being a parent’s album choice for their kinder.  Therefore the search for that perfect genre mixing of Indie/Alternative and Children’s music is still on.  Record companies, please feel free to take on the challenge!!!