For those in their 40s, the flicker of nostalgia for the animated shorts collected in Celestial Navigations: The Short Films of Al Jarnow (Numero DVD) will pass quickly. Many of these first appeared on Sesame Street or other children’s programming from the 1970s-’80s, but films that were once engaging if a bit sober now seem like remarkably disciplined efforts at capturing time on film. “Jesse” cycles through a series of photos of Jarnow’s baby in the crib taken over the first six months, each shot from the same position so that the infant seems to cry, play and wrestle to make itself bigger. “Earth Works” uses a mound of wet land to show the development of a stream that becomes a river that starts to erode its banks. Sand drifts to fill in the river, but it eventually reasserts itself as a stream leading to a lake, and so on. Time’s changes play out, but sped up.

Jarnow worked in a number of animation techniques, but the results always have a beautiful, homemade feel to them. They’re not showy, and they rarely lead to a punch line. Instead, they’re fascinated by movement, particularly waves. In studies of cubes and a pegboard grid, wave motion is one of Jarnow’s staples, lending an organic element to a number of films that are otherwise studies in patterns and perception.

Celestial Navigations is Numero Group’s first foray into DVDs, and it’s very successful. The packaging is beautiful including a booklet that is handsome and readable – the latter a characteristic Rhino’s booklets didn’t always achieve. It’s also Numero at its most successful. There are times when its CD reissues of overlooked R&B scenes and labels present the merely generic – material that’s imitative and signals who was charting, rather than diamonds in the rough – but its best reissues find something truly idiosyncratic that shouldn’t be missed. Soul Messages from Dimona is one such disc, the recent Good God! Born Again Funk is like that, and Celestial Navigations is like that.

… and last week, I praised the New Pornographers’ Together. I still like it a lot; in fact, I think it’s the most consistent of their albums. My only nagging feeling about this one is that it hasn’t forced lines into my consciousness. In the past, I’ve admired how the strength of A.C. Newman and Dan Bejar’s melodies could make such impressionistic lines as “the truth in one free afternoon” and “a new empire in rags” ones that stick in my head, even though their meanings aren’t clear. Their attention to the sound of music is obvious, and now that the songs seem like they’ve been around forever, I hear new, rewarding musical details. But only the refrain, “Tonight will be an open mic” in the coda of Bejar’s “Crash Years” sticks with me lyrically.