Album Notes

THE TERRIBLE TWOS
If You Ever See An Owl


Matthew Pryor, vocals, guitar, piano
Bill Belzer, drums
Dustin Kinsey, guitar
Eric McCann, bass

“I made a record that I like that my kids like, too. We can all listen to it in the car without getting a migraine,” quips Matt Pryor, frontman for The Terrible Twos, whose debut album, If You Ever See An Owl is described matter-of-factly on the band’s Web site as “something cool for the kids.”

A married father of three who lives with his family in Lawrence, Kansas, Pryor knows a thing or two about making something cool. He fronted a post-punk pop outfit called The Get Up Kids – launched when he was a teen – for nearly 10 years, touring the world and building a devoted fan base over the course of five albums. His current alter ego is that of singer/songwriter/guitarist for The New Amsterdams, who released their latest album, the critically acclaimed Story Like a Scar, in April 2006. And the current alter ego of The New Amsterdams is … The Terrible Twos; in true superhero fashion, Pryor, drummer Bill Belzer (who wrote and sings two cuts on If You Ever See An Owl), guitarist Dustin Kinsey and bassist Eric McCann play Twos shows by day and New Ams shows by night.

It works because the 15 tracks comprising If You Ever See An Owl are, according to Pryor, “essentially pop songs.” “I don’t think music has to be tailored to children necessarily,” he says. “They respond to a strong melody like anyone else. As far as I’m concerned, the best children’s music isn’t the cheesy crap that drives parents insane but the intelligently written stuff that is basically pop music.”

If You Ever See An Owl standouts like “We Can All Get Along With Dinosaurs,” “Lady Bug,” “When I Get to Eleven,” “Caroline” and “Grumpy Bug” are, in fact, as hooky as they come. For Pryor, the primary difference between them and New Amsterdams songs is what he calls “silly lyrics,” though, to be sure, a sense of delight and innocence, qualities not generally apropos of New Ams material, defines the spirit of the Twos. Moreover, If You Ever See An Owl – recorded largely in Pryor’s garage and mixed by an engineer whose sons go to school with Pryor’s daughter – is a more gentle, acoustic, stripped-down affair than, say, Story Like a Scar. (Plus, you’re unlikely to hear out-of-tune toy piano on a New Ams album or, for that matter, the sounds of a rake, a broom, a mop and a shovel.)

Pryor confides that one of the reasons he left The Get Up Kids was because he wanted to settle down and raise a family, whereas his bandmates were not yet at that point in their lives. He began writing songs for his kids and thinking about releasing a children’s album partly because it would provide a clear creative demarcation from the then-recently concluded Get Up Kids era. “My initial wave of inspiration was just to do something different,” he explains, “something fun that there’d be no expectations for. And then I started thinking about all the children’s music my kids were listening to and how a lot of it really wasn’t any good.”

“I think that’s because, in a lot of cases, you have adults assuming what kids like and then trying to manufacture that,” he continues. “With The Terrible Twos, I just wrote what I liked, and as it turned out, my kids liked it, too.

That focus group of his children was also instrumental in determining the creative direction of the album. Pryor reveals that the disc’s title track – which bears the wonderfully surreal lyric, “If you ever see an owl/ Make sure that he can hear/ Make sure he doesn’t have any/ Speakers in his ears” – arose when his daughter took to walking around the house going “hoo hoo.” She graciously recreated those performances for the album.

Similarly, “The Littlest Houdini,” a prime example of Pryor’s gift for creating lilting, indelible melodies, takes its inspiration from the songwriter’s two-year-old son (who, when he turned two, asked for a drum kit, which he plays every day). “Trying to get him to sleep has always been a challenge,” Pryor notes with clear understatement. “You're taught how to swaddle them in a blanket, which comforts them and calms them down and helps them go to sleep. But my son would figure out a way to unswaddle himself in about a minute – there was no stopping him.”

Certainly, the parents of the kids who will soon demand to hear If You Ever See An Owl over and over can relate to that struggle (revisited in the lovely, hushed “Grumpy Bug”), as they will to this stanza from “Pizza and Chocolate Milk”: “Spaghetti, yes/ I want spaghetti on my plate/ Don’t try to force me to eat vegetables I hate/ You may think I’m kidding/ That I won’t win/ If I keep screaming, you’ll cave in.”

Much of Owl’s “silly lyrics” are simply observations of the everyday adventure that is family life. Asked if he felt an obligation to make these songs educational in some way – “We Can All Get Along With Dinosaurs,” for one, is a lesson in embracing our differences – he says: “I hate to be preached at and I don’t think kids like it either. Yes, songs like ‘Math Stomp’ and ‘Oneplusoneistwo’ are obviously somewhat educational, but I didn’t want there to be a moral to every story. These songs are more about fun and entertainment, and if there’s some learning in there, that’s great.”

This is consistent with Pryor’s unpretentious approach to his work (when he gets on the phone to discuss If You Ever See An Owl, he says: “Can you hang on a sec? I have to wash the dough off my hands; we’ve been making pizza”). He confirms that having children has, of course, changed his life immeasurably, but it hasn’t had any sort of cosmic impact on his songwriting. “I’ll tell you how it’s affected my creative life,” he offers: “If my kids take a short nap, I write a short song; if they take a longer nap, I write a longer song.”

Moreover, he is disinclined to take himself more seriously now that he’s written an album his kids enjoy. “This record is something I did for fun,” he reiterates. “I don’t consider myself a ‘children’s artist’ now. I’m just an artist who made some music children like.”

“The first record I ever owned,” he recalls, “was ‘Crocodile Rock.’ I’m pretty sure Elton John didn’t record that song for kids, but you can see how a kid would relate to it. I loved it, and I listened to it until I wore that 45 out. Which is kind of how I think about the Terrible Twos record – making it wasn’t much different from how I’ve always made music, but kids can definitely relate to it. And I hope they’ll love this record and listen to it until they wear it out.”