There's something so innocent, so soothing and adorable, about the voice of a child.
Whether shouting anthems about Harry Potter over a drum machine, playing deceivingly adult indie rock or crooning subtly racist White Nationalist folk songs, music performed by children is too sincere to write off as silly or forgettable. Well, maybe it is silly.
But there's a reason that four of the 12 Kidz Bop records have gone gold. Prepubescent songwriters are coming from a totally different perspective. They haven't been scourged by love or felt the angst of high school. Most "kiddie-core" artists haven't even hit junior high.
So sit back, dust off your copy of "The Phantom Tollbooth," and check out these four kid bands. Sure, their songs are asinine and elementary. But it's fitting: they are in elementary school.
EYEBALL SKELETON
There isn't much story behind the name of this Maryland family act. Bassist Charlie thought of the name eyeball and guitarist JJ thought of the name skeleton. They compromised, and Eyeball Skeleton was born. The band started when Charlie was in first grade and JJ was in kindergarten. And there's Dad, who plays drums for Spoils of NW, as well as his sons' band.
Eyeball Skeleton released an album on My Pal God records, collecting the four singles of "Mayo Elementary School's most popular band." The songs are full of imagery that only an 8-year-old could dream up. "Smokey Turtle" is about a turtle getting very hot in the desert. The brothers say there is a plan to do a split with their cousins' kiddie-core band, Lizard Lips, in the near future.
SMOOSH
Jason McGerr, the drummer for Death Cab for Cutie, discovered Smoosh in 2002. He'd been giving drum lessons to 8-year-old Chloe when her sister, 10-year-old Asya, started coming to practice with her keyboard. McGerr encouraged the sisters to write songs, and two years later they were opening up for national indie acts like Cat Power and Sleater-Kinney. In 2004 the duo released their debut album, "She Like Electric."
The music of Smoosh is synth-rock and power pop, and their songwriting stands out among the myriad of dragons and skeletons that kiddie-core often devolves into. Asya soulfully sings of love and heartbreak. She's getting older now, 14 this year. The sisters of Smoosh are coming into themselves as songwriters and shedding the child-songwriter gimmick. They signed to Barsuk records this year, releasing their sophomore album, "Free to Stay." They've grown up a lot musically in two years, and are bound only to get better with age.
PRUSSIAN BLUE
Twins Lynx and Lamb dropped their first album when they were 11 years old. The pair writes all their music and both sing on the record. The problem with Prussian Blue is less in the music, kind of a generic alt-folk, and more in what they're singing about.
Prussian Blue is a White Nationalist band, professing a harsh doctrine of white pride and racial purity. Comparisons to Nazi-punk bands like Skrewdriver, a name that comes up whenever white-pride bands crop up, aren't really fitting. But there must be something essentially hateful about their music. They put out an album this year, "For the Fatherland," which contains music that has yet to be banned by the German government.
It's scary to hear girls indoctrinated at such a young age. There's a point where a child's voice is no longer comforting. It's somewhere between "white power!" and "mien fuhrer!"
THE HUNGARIAN HORNTAILS
The Harry Potter series has sparked, in addition to Trapper Keepers and a chamber of secrets' worth of slash fan fiction, a musical genre. Wizard Rock has become nothing short of a Myspace phenomenon, and the Hungarian Horntails are right there in the middle of it.
The Hungarian Horntails is Darius, 7, who has enough love for the Harry Potter series to shout it to the world. And he does, in the song "Dragon Rock Rulz," a simple song that assures us that dragon rock does, in fact, rule. The songs are short and sweet, mostly just Darius shouting over a drum machine or sitar loop.
His CD, "Burn Voldemort's Butt," is available, all proceeds going straight to his savings account.
