#10: Randy Kaplan - The Kids Are All Id

Randy Kaplan is one of family music's most inventive storytellers. The fanciful stories sprung from the conjoined heads of Shel Silverstein and Bob Dylan are Kaplan's calling card, and he's very, very good at them. There's a trio of Ezra Jack Keats-based songs about two-thirds of the way through the disk which are particularly sweet and while Kaplan writes wonderful lyrics, he also writes some great musical bits and he and his producer Mike West give the album a natural, expansive sound. The Kids Are All Id is Randy Kaplan's best album yet, and shows Kaplan's greatest strength -- his ability to listen to and interact with the kids who are his audience and to turn that into stories in song. -- Stefan Shepherd, Zooglobble