For a three-year-old, my daughter has good taste in music…of course, that comes from being force fed a diet of Ramones, Iggy and the Stooges, Outkast, Arcade Fire and other music-snob totems since birth. Some call it cruelty and want to call child protective services. I call it a proper education from a young age. Anyway, it’s always a battle. I have to try to explain to her why artists aimed at kids are garbage. She shouldn’t be wasting her time with the Wiggles (“They don’t even play their instruments!”) and Laurie Berkner (“She’s doing a pale imitation of what Jonathan Richman has already done so much better”), I try to explain. She’s not having that and, if she didn’t have some rock geek old man, she wouldn’t have to. So I think I found something that might be the perfect balance for both us with See You on the Moon!, which collects a lineup of quantified indie rock superstars doing funny, kooky songs aimed at the nursery school set. Broken Social Scene retakes Peter, Paul and Mary’s “Puff the Magic Dragon” as a sparse and reverby dreamtime lullaby. Fembots’ “Under the Bed” is verbatim, latter-era Tom Waits with its skewered carnivalia. Great Lakes Swimmers offer the breezy title track, contemplating careers as a farmer, astronaut and veterinarian, and is the closest thing to a proper “kid’s song” here. Sufjan Stevens’s waltzing “The Friendly Beasts” is pretty but might fit better on a Christmas album while Kid Koala and Lederhosen Lucil offer a stripped-beat and nursery rhyme called “Fruit Belt.” My gripe is the record is a little too laidback and sleepy, but then again what do I know? Every time we get in the car See You on the Moon! is my daughter’s first request, beating out the Fabs’ “Yellow Submarine” and “Octopus’ Garden.” I think that means it’s pretty good.

Now that Frank Black’s career as an alt-country musician is cemented by the imminent release of a second album in that genre—a double CD, no less—it is time to draw a definitive line between Black and his alias/alter-ego, the Pixies’ Black Francis. Though Francis is still making indescribable music with the Pixies (a tour is scheduled for later this year), Black, who is rumored to begin touring with the Foo Fighters when they reach the East Coast this August, is busy pushing a persona that is, if anything, straight-up alt-country. It’s not really even that “alternative,” with songs like “Dirty Old Town” loaded with steel guitar, honky-tonk charms and a decidedly Southern drawl coming from Black. The majority of the songs on this 27-track album seem to be channeling other noteworthy musicians, from Van Morrison to Jim Croce, Leon Redbone, Dire Straits, Smog, Johnny Cash, Vic Chestnutt, the Boss, John Lennon and even Neil Diamond. The list goes on to include less surprising influences like Pere Ubu and Captain Beefheart—both of whom Black has worked with before, in one persona or another—but the possible derivations are so numerous I began to wonder, “Is this some kind of respectful sendup of the great male vocalists of our time?” Some of this may be explained by the album’s featured guest players, namely the Band’s Levon Helm, Cheap Trick’s Tom Peterson and Bad Company's Simon Kirke—though, of these, only the Band’s influence really makes a mark; actually I wish this album had more of Cheap Trick's influence on it. Another explanation is that Pixies fans are simply getting old (though legions of new, younger fans were born when Fight Club ended, I know). Is this what happened to devoted Genesis fans, now saddled with a store of Phil Collins records? Or to lovers of the Police, who are still conflicted about Sting? These comparisons are probably unfair—especially the Phil Collins one—for this is by no means a bad album, nor is it likely to offend anyone, but it may disappoint and confuse. Should this happen, Pixies fans take heart and pop in Surfer Rosa; it is the perfect antidote to Fast Man Raider Man.