Brady Rymer Every Day Is a Birthday

Less manic than Ralph's World, more rockin' than Laurie Berkner, and right in time with the new breed of hipsterish kids' musicians is Brady Rymer, Long Island's own antidote to the parent-torturing Bop invasion (Kidz or Doodles, take your pick). Unlike a herd of other Dan Zanes acolytes, Rymer rides a crest of credibility conferred by his former jam-bander status; before he started making kids' music in 2000, he was the leader of From Good Homes, a rock quintet that opened for Dave Matthews, Bob Weir and a bunch of notable others. Instead of leaving the guitar-heavy, keep-it-coming sensibility behind, then, he works it deep into his discs the same way a preschooler might work stray Cheerios into her Play-Doh sculpture. The latest evidence is Every Day is a Birthday, a full-on family stomper. There it is, artfully and definitively incorporated into "Keep Up with You," a lighthearted rant about grownups' saving graces (coffee, red wine), and there it is again on "Diggin' up a Dinosaur," an exploratory ode to finding oneself, be it through "reading a comic book or baiting a fishing hook." The title track serves up cake and one-for-every-year spankings with a soft touch, but it's the disc-ending extras that'll snare 2- to 10-year-olds like so many cereal-box surprises: "Snippets" plays name that tune with the songs that came before it, and "Happy Birthday Around the World" sends out celebratory hollers in languages both exotic (Lithuanian) and ridiculous (Scooby Doo). What makes this disc such a keeper, and so thoroughly Rymer-esque, is they all make you want to join the party. --Tammy La Gorce