Here Come The 123s

Here come the 123S by they might be Giants have children take an imaginative look at numbers with brilliant animations and delightful puppets. The band's lucky thirteenth album, their third children's album and the first album to earn them a Grammy for best children's album in 2009. Original songs by they might's be Giants include zeroes, one everything, number two troops has three eyes, apartment four, high five!, the secret life of six, seven, seven days of the week (I never go to work), figure eight, Pirate girls nine, nine bowls of Soup, one Dozen Monkeys (with Hannah Levine), eight hundred and thirteen mile car trip, Infinity, I can add even numbers and ooh la! ooh la! a Deluxe 2 disc set includes CD + DVD with 24 songs and 23 music videos.

They Might Be Giants are like the handful of best-selling authors who also happen to be doctors or astrophysicists: They do two things so well--in their case kids' music and grown-up music--that it seems a little unfair, like the talent scale has been tipped too hard in their favor. Like Here Come the 123s, the follow-up to 2005's Here Come the ABCs, and TMBG's third kids' record. Here the Johns--Linnell and Flansburgh--are up to their usual smart shenanigans: In "Seven," a bunch of skinny numerals crash a stranger’s living room before settling in for some cake, and in "Nine Bowls of Soup" an ichthyosaur is so enamored of soup he works out a way to balance a multitude of bowls on his scaly body. The brilliance isn’t limited to the lyrics. The Johns know a thing or 1-2-3 about crafting seriously jammable music. Highights include “High Five,” a flippy, freewheeling dab of disco, and “One Everything,” a juiced-up, jangly rocker with a message for listeners ages 3 to 93: an untidy room actually is an insult to the omniverse. --Tammy La Gorce