Search - Connie Kaldor; Carmen Campagne :: Lullaby Berceuse: A Warm Prairie Night

With so many hipster artists cranking out kids' music, finding a disc of unflashy tunes for a little one to nap by can be like shopping for Keds at a custom sneaker boutique. That's not to suggest that this sweetly sung collection of French and English lullabies is plain vanilla, only that it's a likably retro exercise in dispensing the kind of music that has effectively carted kids off to the sandman for centuries. Connie Kaldor and Carmen Campagne, the performers of these 13 mostly original but classic-sounding tracks, carry their tunes in maternal voices that could smooth the most rumpled of nerves, be they in a colicky infant or a cranky grandparent. And the landscapes they describe in service of their task seem plucked from a holistic practitioner's remedy book: "Close your eyes and dream/There are clouds to cuddle/Moonbeams to climb/Stardust to catch you," goes the gentle first verse to "Dream Baby L'enfant des Reves." Kaldor and Campagne's Canadian background accounts for the bilingual twist, but it's not distracting; the French, in fact, compounds the prairie night's poufy pastel sweetness. --Tammy La Gorce