***Wayne Potash***

Already one of my faves of 2010...a rock opera about a typical kid's day from sunup to sundown! Wayne Potash's A Day in the Life takes musical cues from classic rock and country, but maintains a cohesive sound throughout.

Read a full review of A Day in the Life over at KidsMusic.About.com, and make sure to check out the tunes "Snack Time," "I Wanna Take a Nap," and "After My Bath," just to name a few.

It's a shame...

...that a bland product like The Jonas Brothers' Lines, Vines and Trying Times has massive advertising dollars behind it and hits #1 on the Billboard Charts, while a brilliant effort like Cathy Heller's Say Hello to the Sun remains relatively unknown. Both albums are aimed at the pop music-lovin' preteen crowd, but Heller beats the big label machine at their own game, hands down. Get the word out, people: there's awesome music out there for kids!

• Read a full review of Cathy Heller's Say Hello to the Sun
  
• Read a full review of The Jonas Brothers' Lines, Vines and Trying Times
  

Sedaka is back!

At the very least, this is a cute distraction. At the most, it's a fun, super catchy introduction for the whole family to the talents of Neil Sedaka. Hopefully, Sedaka's kids' debut, Waking Up is Hard to Do, will lead to further exploration of his poptacular back catalog of hits. And I can pretty much guarantee that the line "Lunch, lunch will keep us together" will get stuck in your head for days!

***Here We Go***

How often does one get to write a music review in which the band name, the album title, and the lead song are all the same? The debut kids' record by Here We Go is called Here We Go, and the first song on the CD is, yep, you guessed it, "Here We Go." That sort of cheekiness informs Here We Go's music: carefree and sunny, but with a wink-yer-eye awareness.

Here We Go is basically Mississippi-based Australian expat Phil Ulrich doin' it all. His production skills are part of what makes Here We Go so listenable: subtle drum machine tracks are smoothly mixed with the sounds of a pedal steel guitar or, say, a ukulele. In fact, the project sounds like a cross between Jason Kleinberg's kids' band, me 3, and Beck.

Highlights of Here We Go's Here We Go include "All Hungry Babies," a hand-wavin' shout-out to tiny tots everywhere; the DEVO beats and 8-bit bleeps of "One to Eight," a tune that would feel right at home on an episode of Yo Gabba Gabba; the slippery bass, wiggly slide guitar, and dusty drum loop of "Down Home," a Beck-like tune about a homesick chicken; and lines like this from "Baby Food:" 'You may say that it's very, very strange / But there's a little sign that hangs inside the corner of my brain / It says, "Don't make your body do more than it can do." / Baby food is good because you do not have to chew.'

Danceable kids' music from the Deep South via the Southern Hemisphere. Dig it.