Schoolhouse Rock: America Rock

The horn-backed swing of "Fireworks" will charm the ear of countless Gen-X listeners and their parents, as will most of this historically themed collection of songs from the ingeniously educational Schoolhouse Rock animations. Lyricists Lynn Ahrens and jazz vocal great Bob Dorough make fine yarns out of a (homogenized) overall narrative of the United States, which all seems pretty peachy in this context. This isn't a set to teach the nuances or vagaries of U.S. history, but "I'm Just a Bill" can leave kids in the single digits tracking the progress of legislation and asking what suffering and suffrage have to do with each other ("Sufferin' Till Suffrage") and inquiring about the Bill of Rights. The music is gentle but never silly or unlikable. Like that of the other volumes in the Schoolhouse Rock series, this CD's length is brief, but these themed packages seem to bear their pithy contents well. --Andrew Bartlett