have always had a flair for educational songs. More than a decade after its release, the refrain of ("The sun is a mass of incandescent gas/A gigantic nuclear furnace") still has a pesky way of lodging itself in the brain. And, as the band's wonderful first album, , demonstrated, ' music speaks to kids in a way that few other bands' work can; they never sound like they're talking (or singing) down to their smaller fans. makes the most of the band's ability to teach and reach children, and more than delivers on its promise to "learn ABCs the fun way!" Since this is a more educational enterprise than was, is a little more straightforward and like a traditional album than its predecessor. Several songs, like are more or less recitations of the alphabet, albeit with a few twists: brings the album to a close with a dramatic backwards reading of the alphabet, and is a mini-atlas, spanning Algeria to Zimbabwe. This is still a album, though, and the band's catchy melodies and smart wordplay haven't been dumbed down. with its charming, -like pianos and images of migrating geese and electric guitars, is another of 's seemingly effortless but brilliant songs, and offers an extra-credit lesson in botany as well as the alphabet. brings personality to the alphabet's characters, with some letters sharing songs and others getting songs of their own. The bouncy is an immediate kid-pleaser, while casts these letters as pals that "make a cool sound together" -- much like and themselves. F gets a celebration of imagination so good that they had to include it on the album twice. Other songs are more conceptual: which is all about alliteration, lives up to its title, while gets downright meta. Amidst all the learning, there's still plenty of room for plain old fun, as shown by the squiggly synths on ; the self-explanatory ; and which celebrates the joy of making silly mouth noises with scat-like babbling. Though some of the songs feel a little incomplete without the dazzling visuals of the DVD version, is still a delight. It might be slightly less magical than , but it's a far cry from a by-the-numbers (or letters) album. ~ Heather Phares