A Parent's Home Companion

This is the Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer album you don't really want your children to listen to. This perhaps implies that the duo lets forth all the socially unacceptable and rude lyrics that they have withheld from all their other albums. This is incorrect; the Marxer & Fink foul-mouthed metal band CD has yet to see the light of day, and it's not advisable to hold your breath for that one. Instead, A Parents' Home Companion is a wise and wry collection of songs about the experience of being a father or mother, about the joys and inconveniences and perils of parenthood. There are two reasons not to let your children listen to this one. The first is that they won't understand some of the ideas in this CD, like the one about being certain you're raising warped sociopaths because everyone but you got an instruction manual with their children. The second reason is that if your children hear "Are We There Yet," the song about how annoying that particular question is on a long car trip, your children will sing it to you on every subsequent auto journey of more than a block. In terms of annoyingly catchy tunes, it's right up there with "It's a Small World After All." That aside, if you are a parent and might appreciate a volume of music that has a certain amount of wisdom and a whole lot of humor, you need this CD.