Mike Park: SMILE

If you're a parent, searching out new music for your kids becomes second nature. Kids love music; that's just fundamental. There's a lot of music on offer, but most of it is bland, commercial pap. Think back to a few decades ago, when The Muppets consistently featured awesome musicians and actors, a time when making great music for kids was cool. Thanks to a resurgence in recent years, we now occasionally find albums from top-shelf artists devoted to children, but good material is still rare enough to be notable. Mike Park: SMILE is an example of what independent artists can produce when unhindered by marketing departments and licensing constraints. Like any collection of music from a single artist, you may find it more or less to your liking from a style perspective, but you can't argue with the achievement.

Mike Park would certainly be categorized as an Indie artist, in the sense that he's a self-made man with his own label and catalog of music. Getting away from the labels used in record stores or radio, Park is probably best categorized as a punk musician, claiming influences like Black Flag, Minor Threat, and The Minutemen. So what does it sound like when punk meets playpen? Imagine the bouncy sound that generates the inertia for a mosh-pit, translated to lyrics and stories that even very young kids can enjoy. Much like punk, Mike Park: SMILE is a bit one-dimensional, but for the right kids in the right mood, it will work wonders. It's the music you'll put on for play dates and birthday parties, in those moments when you hope your kids get their wiggles out in anticipation for meals, naps, or whatever else it is that kids do when they're not bouncing around like Mexican jumping beans.

Some of our favorites on the record include "When The Light Turns Red You Stop," about some basic traffic safety that kids like to learn about normally, "1..2..3..4..5..6..7..8..Drums," which focuses on the instrument that most kids are excited about in any rock band, and the more relaxed acoustic closer, "We All Live In Animal Park." Most of the songs have a "chunk-chunk-chunk" focus that draws heavily from Park's hardcore roots; it's nice when you play this on rotation with other tunes, as in an iPod mix, but listening to the record from start to finish becomes a bit repetitive. At least there are some stylistic changes, with some songs showing more ska influence, but even then, the instrumentation and mood doesn't change dramatically. When it comes to kids' party music, Mike Park: SMILE is a great soundtrack. It comes across like songs for a television show full of rowdy kids' entertainment, which means it will fail to generate much interest from parents. There are those artists (Elizabeth Mitchell, Jack Johnson) that manage to make great music for kids that appeals equally to the rest of the family. Mike Park: SMILE isn't quite in that echelon, but the album has tons of jump-around energy for your little ones.