FleaBITE: The Jungle is Jumping (Border)

Elsewhere rarely touches children's music (so please don't start sending them) but we have made an exception for Wellington's FleaBITE (Robin Nathan) because her songs are so quirky and when she was Fatcat and Fishface I swear I've referenced Spike Milligan, Yoko Ono, Mary Poppins and reggae when writing about this left-field stuff.

This is another such outing with assistance from the Phoenix Foundation's Conrad Wedde and Chris O'Connor plus jazz saxophonist Jeff Henderson.

What I like about Nathan's stuff is that it doesn't talk down to kids and assumes they are pretty sophisticated musically, and why shouldn't they be? They hear pop radio and the music played by adults in their homes so know the reggae tropes, what a saxophone sounds like and they might even spot the reference to Split Enz's Dirty Creature here.

This is rather exotic too as it shuffles around from reggae to salsa and adopts a Pacific ukulele feel for Lady Luck. There's a sea shanty on No Toast.

There's some lovely nonsense stuff here too, as on Don't Believe What I Say: "My name is Marvin, I live in a tree, my little brother's older than me, my mother's a giant, my dad's a dwarf, my brother's a hermit lives under a wharf . . . don't believe what I say".

There are songs about being angry, wearing pyjamas and how we need bees. 

And Peel Me might just be the best song ever written about ways to prepare potatoes ever.

Okay everybody, it's time to Do the Woopsie . . .