Price: $16.41

ARRRRRRR!!!

Normally I don’t get into music quickly - even stuff I end up loving will often take me 3 or 4 or 10 listens before I start to like it. Not so this CD - the first time I heard “Pieces of 8ight” I just couldn’t keep the smile off my face, it’s just so ridiculously up my street. I’m favourably disposed to seafaring and pirate-y stuff for a start, having worked as an oceanographer for a while and being, believe it or not, actually descended from pirates - according to my mother-in-law’s genealogical books the surname Parle comes from French pirates shipwrecked off south-eastern Ireland. There are other origin stories for the name, of course, but that’s the one I’m going with (wouldn’t you?). And as for the music, well, there’s a Russian-sounding melody and a xylophone and lots of “HEY!”s (Isabelle thinks it sounds like Gogol Bordello), so how can I resist? Isabelle loves it too - the first time I put it on she instantly got up and started dancing round the kitchen . And it’s got an amazing video, check it out:

The rest of the music is very diverse (Niamh thought it was a compilation at first) - there are other pirate-y sounding tracks like “Scallywag”, then there’s some Pogues-y traditional sea-shanty fare like “Weigh anchor” and then there’s rock’n'roll tunes like “Pirate party” and one real Flaming-Lips-style noughties indie rocker about a sea monster. The only misstep is yet another version of “Nellie the Elephant” (what is it with rock bands and Nellie the Elephant?) that doesn’t measure up to Mandy Miller’s original but the hilarious introduction to the song makes up for it. The rest is all great - really well-written party songs with really funny lyrics and interludes. I’d absolutely love to see them live, though being from the north-western US I don’t expect they’ll be setting their compasses for Ireland anytime soon. The album has achieved the ultimate accolade in my book - I’ve gone and learned two of the songs - so next time you’re at a party with me (not that I go to many parties these days) expect to hear me calling on myself to sing them.

Price: $16.41

I mustn’t have watched much TV as a kid, because when people around me have nostalgic conversations about Grange Hill and He-Man and the like I’m utterly lost, but, like everyone else who grew up in the 70s, I did watch Sesame Street. I honestly can’t remember what I thought of it at the time, but then we put this CD on in the kitchen and heard:

Sunny day, sweeping the clouds away

On my way to where the air is sweet

Can you tell me how to get, how to get to Sesame Street

Niamh, washing the dishes, just said “Oooooooh!”. Then on came:

Who are the people in your neighbourhood, in your neighbourhood

In your neigh-bour-hood …

… and I couldn’t stop grinning, I felt like I was 5 again. Obviously not every song you might have loved in your childhood is here (like the sadly absent “One of these kids is doing his own thing”), but there’s a wide enough selection from across the years to put a smile on the face of any grown-up - from “C is for Cookie” to “Elmo’s song”.

As for Isabelle’s and Heather’s reactions - well, Sesame St is famous for testing everything they do on kids and only using stuff that the kids really engage with, and it shows. They’ve never seen the show, but Isabelle has really taken to the characters just based on the songs - “Who’s singing this? Grover? Is he a boy? He sounds like Mrs. Piggy.” (yes, Mrs. Piggy, she doesn’t really get the Mrs./Miss thing just yet - she calls Heather “Little Mrs. Mischief”) - and now she’s listening to lyrics a bit she’s getting a big kick out of the idea of monsters singing about how much they love rubbish and frogs lamenting their colour. And Heather spent Friday morning squealing with delight while “dancing” her baby dolly up and down on the kitchen floor to “Rubber Duckie”.

So - a fun nostalgic treat for adults, and the kids dig it too.

Price: $18.46

This is my second discovery from myself and Heather’s weaning week. I normally shy away from anything with the word “celtic” in it. Not that I’ve got anything against Irish music - I could sing you ballads all night long (or could have once, fatherhood hasn’t been kind to my memory) - but “celtic” makes me think of … well, druids and healing crystals. And Enya. So I was half expecting New Age renditions of Danny Boy, but happily I got almost the exact opposite - honest-to-goodness performances of some really top-notch Irish/Scottish music I had (mostly) never heard before. The tunes are not strictly lullabies, but they - songs and traditional dancing music both - are all quiet and soothing and I guess babies don’t care about strict definitions one way or the other.

My favourite tune is called “Goodnight and joy”  - it seems to be a variation on the well-known “The Parting Glass” and it makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck every time I hear it. The other highlight is a jig called “The Dove’s Return” played on harp which is … well, I hesitate to use the word “magical” because the word is almost as suspect as “celtic”, but really it is magical - plus it’s got pretty much the perfect rocking-to-sleep tempo and rhythm and on a normal night it’s rare that Heather makes it to the end awake.

Highlights aside, this is consistently good all the way through and I’d recommend it to anyone. Like Asian Dreamland it performed well in rigorous field-testing, and it has the added benefit, on account of the music being so good, of being inclined to distract you from the fact that you’ve been pacing the floor half the night and have to go work in 3 hours. A sanity saver.

Price: $18.46

A children’s introduction to Beethoven, this is the story of a young boy called Christoph who lives in 1820s Vienna. After his father’s death, his mother takes in a lodger who Christoph thinks is a madman - eccentric, unkempt in the extreme and constantly making a racket in his room. He writes to his uncle to complain, and the story continues in the form of letters between the two of them. The boy’s initial hostility towards the lodger (none other than Ludwig Van Beethoven) softens and eventually, as the premiere of the 9th symphony approaches, they kinda become friends.

Beethoven’s music underscores the text throughout - symphonies 5-9, the Moonlight and Pathetique sonatas and lots more. The music isn’t separate from the story, it’s more like the soundtrack - I guess the theory is that your child (and you) will come to know and love the tunes by osmosis. It’s hard to tell how well the theory has worked on Isabelle - I did try to see how she’d get on listening to the 5th symphony on its own one day and was amazed at how quiet she was being until I realised she had fallen asleep.

She really loves this CD though, whatever about the theory. On our first listen in the car during our summer holidays she dozed off halfway through and we thought it was obviously too old for her and were trying to decide what older kid to pass it on to (it didn’t help either that Niamh took against the boy narrator, Christoph, because he was “a whinger”). When she woke up she surprised us by demanding to continue listening, and then demanding the album regularly (along with Peter and the Wolf) all through the holiday (and since).

The story really draws you in after a while (even Niamh got to like Christoph eventually) - it’s fiction, of course, but you feel like you’re getting a real insight into the composer’s life and times - and naturally the music is fantastic. So while I can’t guarantee that your children will be able to tell the 7th symphony from the 6th after listening to this, if they’re anything like mine they’ll enjoy listening to it (Isabelle grandly declared that this is the third best CD ever, after Rompe and Mamma Mia) and you might too.