The kazoo: it's the ultimate folk aesthetic, an instrument anyone can play, one that most people probably associate with wax paper, a rubber band, a toilet paper roll and being a kid. Go Slow Poke, a trio from Bellingham, Washington, consisting of Peter William Woiwod, Joel Myrene and Rob Stauffer, rock out with a kazoo. And, really, the kazoo, in a sense, is idiomatic of their work. It is featured in their most played track on MySpace, called "Be Less Embarrassing," a tune which also features what sounds like a toy xylophone, keeping with this invocation of childhood.
The track is irresistibly catchy, but beneath that catchiness is something more. Their invocation of childhood is not employed just for the sake of twee nostalgia, but rather turns out to be a more subtle exploration of how one relates to one's own childhood.
"Still I'm glad I was in time to see your childhood burn out; in some way I admit that's what my songs are all about." 
Photo by Adam Forslund
It's not like Go Slow Poke is trying to hide this particular theme. In most of their tunes, the trope is spelled out as clear as Christmas morning. These songs are meditations on that transition from innocence to experience, downright Wordsworthian in their nuanced obsession with the inevitable end of youth.
What keeps one's interest in these songs – above and beyond the indie pop hum-ability that pervades them -- is the tension that surfaces in the lyrics, a desire to return to the safety and purity of childhood and then at once an embarrassment and pain when looking back on, say, 4th grade. (Judy Blume anyone?)
And this theme is complimented by the music. Along with the kazoo and xylophone are acoustic guitars, cheap keyboard sounds and hand claps. It’s like Go Slow Poke raided the elementary school music classroom before they recorded the songs. The whole package can make you cringe, not necessarily out of embarrassment for the band, but rather for the successful invocation of this paradoxical nostalgia that rings true.
"I'll pass the chicken pox to you; teachers and parents who said I was cute. You just encourage me, now look what I've become. At this rate I'll be no one." 
Photo by Adam Forslund
Think about the band's name itself, Go Slow Poke. Does anyone over the age of 11 even use the term Slow Poke? It is an insult, bringing back memories of being taunted on the playground, being inadequate physically, being placed at the bottom of the pecking order cruelly established between children starting at about the age of 3. But there's even more to the band name: it also suggests a person who is slow to leave childhood, who can't seem to make the transition to adulthood, whether by fate or by choice. Are you going to grow up or what?
"And I hope the snow comes early and pushes me inside; so I never have to see you or open myself wide." >
Photo by Adam Forslund
There's another angle to these tunes, the broken heart angle, that is somehow bound up with this childhood obsession. You can almost piece together a relationship that was somehow fragilely based on a collective nostalgia for the past -- twenty somethings watching The Electric Company DVDs together, making angels in the snow, etc. -- and then that relationship not being able to survive on that childhood nostalgia alone, thus the backlash on the relationship explicated in the songs. Or maybe he just got dumped.
"Oh when we sleep together, we feel to sick to speak. I hope you come home early and find me still asleep."
These days, bands can create a pastiche of signifiers about themselves on the web above and beyond just their music and some artful headshots. The combination of found images, YouTube videos and claimed influences are clues to what the band wants to be all about. Consider the references employed by "Go Slow Poke" on their MySpace page and their Virb page: a Carl Sagan 70s Cosmos segment that earnestly validates the glory of being human; a picture of Elmo with Roscoe Orman from Seseme Street; an image of someone feeding a baby goat; and a shout out to Raffi, seventies children's songster extraordinaire. It all serves their theme. Hey, give 'em credit: their consistent.
"I'm trying so hard to keep my mouth closed and my fingers out of my nose."
Photo by Adam Forslund