Various Artists

See You On The Moon! Songs For Kids Of All Ages

[2/5] There’s something so innocent about this compilation–a collection of kids’ songs performed by some of the most creative minds in indie music; and yet, there’s also something completely pedantic and evil about See You On The Moon!’s subtext. Okay, sure: As indie-rock snobs come of child-bearing age, it’s presumed they’ll want to impose upon their kids the same repressive, myopic sense of aesthetics through which they’ve formed their own identities. In which case, I guess it makes perfect sense that someone could be delusional enough to picture a toddler getting lost in the lo-fi crackle of Alan Sparhawk’s “Be Nice To People With Lice,” the sad-bastard pall of Broken Social Scene’s “Puff The Magic Dragon,” and the (admittedly, totally beautiful) pastoral nuances of Sufjan Stevens’ take on the traditional French carol “The Friendly Beasts.” But, you know, the Wiggles sell metric tons of CDs because they realize kids’ ears aren’t evolved enough to hear beyond the plastic and the gimmicky, and after 17 tracks of this stuff, “Hot Potato” makes total sense to me, too.
(PAPER BAG) Aaron Burgess