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See You on the Moon

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.