Every where you look in indie at the moment, the kids are taking over. In the UK acts like Cajun Dance Party, Poppy and the Jezebels and promoters of events like the “Underage Festival” and under 18s club nights are showing the over-18s that they too can organise and create music. It’s a vibrant new scene. This release by The Tiny Masters of Today (13 and 11-year old brother and sister Ivan and Ada) is therefore timely, and can perhaps be seen as the American wing of this trend.

Taken purely on its own merit, Bang Bang Boom Cake stands up impressively well against music made by artists many years older. Characterised, in the main, by short tracks, interesting use of samples, his-and-hers vocals and a distinctive scuzzed-up sound, this is a great racket. Wisely, they stick to themes appropriate to their age, and don’t trying to pretend to be something they are not. For example, the metaphors they use are obviously taken from their real lives, such as “Magician at my birthday party” in Hologram World, (which sounds like a pre-teen B52s), and boy-girl call and response lines (used to best effect in Book Song) are enthusiastic and engaging. If this all sounds a little cutesy or saccharine, then a definite edge, and much needed grit, has been added to proceedings by a deliberate “roughing up” of the vocals in the production suite. This, in conjunction with the fuzzy scratchy guitars, means the overall effect is more Sonic Youth than Hanson.

The most complex, and lyrically interesting, track is Trendsetter – an attack on consumerism delivered almost as a rap. The lyrics range from apposite couplets such as “They need kids to feel like crap to help support the corporations / But it doesn’t add up, according to my calculations”, to the gleeful chanting of “five-three-one-eight-zero-zero-eight”, which anyone still young enough to remember the joys of calculator abuse at school will remember fondly as a way of spelling BOOBIES upside down. As they put it: “We do our magic, you do yours”. Bless.

They even address politics, from an American child’s perspective, on Bushy. Here, the well-selected snippets of the President making amoral / cynical comments contrast brilliantly with the wise-naïve lyrics and Ada’s innocent vocal. That the tune borrows heavily from The Stones’ Not Fade Away can, I think, be forgiven.

No track quite makes it to 3 minutes (and the shortest – Bushy – is a mere 1m 10sec), which, again, feels right. Interlaced throughout with “Woo hoo’s”, bleeps, time signature changes (on the most experimental and perhaps least successful track, End of My Rope) and nonsense words simply strung together because they rhyme and sound good next to each other (see Tooty Frooty (Clarke’s Dream Song)). This is a tiny riot of an album that deserves to be appreciated by kids of all ages.
75%

Links
Tiny Masters of Today [official site] [myspace]