How singer Morgan Taylor drew his way to success with Gustafer Yellowgold

GUSTAFER Yellowgold is a saffron-colored, cone-headed alien who comes from the sun. He relocated to Earth to escape the drudgery of working in his father's raisin carvery, ditching the family business for a shot at a more-inspiring journey.

Gustafer started out as a doodle by Morgan Taylor, a New York-based indie rocker who, like many musicians, was struggling to connect with an audience.

Until, that is, Taylor animated his recent immigrant from the sun.

"The music I'm making is the music I've always been making. But nobody really took note until I started adding cartoons to it," Taylor said. He'll bring Gustafer to the Philadelphia Museum of Art on Sunday for two concerts as part of the museum's daylong "Imaginary Creatures" family event.

The diminutive alien isn't just the subject of Taylor's songs. Gustafer comes alive in colored-pencil animated videos hand-drawn by Taylor. These videos move at the same deliberate pace as the Gustafer songs.

But it's not just the music videos that separate Taylor and Gustafer from the pack. It's that "their" tunes don't sound like they're meant just for kids. Sure, Gustafer's songs are about rocket shoes and socks that stretch to infinity, but they aren't the pop facsimiles churned out by the Disney machine or Raffi's folkie sing-alongs.

Taylor grew up listening to the first wave of alternative rock in the '80s; R.E.M.'s jangle-pop influence is certainly present in his music. It's more mellow and less frenetic, and it's almost surprising that the tempo can keep kids interested for an extended period of time. But it does.

Playing with a yellow extraterrestrial has afforded Taylor a measure of success that he never achieved when he was trying to interest adults, opening for Wilco and taking up residence in an off-Broadway theater.

His next CD/DVD release, "Gustafer Yellowgold's Infinity Sock," comes out March 1 and is the first to create a narrative around Gustafer's world, populated by his best friend Forrest Applecrumbie, a fashionable flightless pterodactyl; and his pets, an eel named Slim (short for Slimothy) and Asparagus, a dragon that lives in Gustafer's fireplace.

"Infinity Sock" follows Gustafer as he searches for the toe end of the universe's longest sock.

Taylor has always had a twin passion for comics and music but never thought to combine the two, nor did he act out a dream to have his own comic strip, beyond stray drawings. "It always seemed way too daunting to come up with an entire universe out of the blue. Where do you start?" Taylor said.

Gustafer began to form when Taylor was at a crossroads. In 2004, his band had broken up and he was deciding whether to form a new one or try something new. While in traditional bands, he would record cassettes of material just meant for him that were more absurd and humorous than his professional work.

Taylor's wife and business partner, Rachel Loshak, encouraged her husband to try his hand writing children's books. When he began, he went back and listened to the personal material, finding common threads in fictitious first-person songs.

"I had accidentally built this entire universe in these scattered pieces that all fit together as I wrote song after song over the years," Taylor said, citing his tune "I'm From the Sun" as the nucleus for Gustafer's backstory. All of the songs from Gustafer's first CD/DVD, "Gustafer Yellowgold's Wide Wild World," were written before even Taylor knew who Gustafer was.

"All I had to do was shake the sieve and see which ones remained of these absurd songs," Taylor said. "It was this big, happy accident."

While Taylor believes that his music needs to stand alone without the video component, the two art forms are inextricably linked. While he writes, he visualizes how it will be animated.

Taylor sees the videos as a throwback for parents who grew up in the '70s and '80s and who are forced to listen to their kids' music, often on loop. Taylor doesn't want parents to suffer. "It's really for adults and it's really for people who enjoy humor and absurdity and good pop music," said the dad of sons Harvey, 3, and Ridley, 7 weeks.

"I'm making music for myself and my generation, but my instinct is to make something catchy, because I want to make pop music. You just have to choose a market. . . . You have to pick your niche."

Taylor has qualms about his niche to a certain degree, because he thinks it hinders a potential audience, mainly those without children who gloss over music targeted at ankle biters. "A lot of people will just pass - 'it's for kids' - but there's nothing that excludes adults," Taylor said. "No one is excluded from Gustafer."

Philadelphia Museum of Art, 26th Street and Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Sunday, 11:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m., free with museum admission of $12-$16, 215-763-8100, philamuseum.org.

Take a listen and see the video of Gustafer Yellowgold's "I'm From the Sun" at www.philly.com/seeYellowgold.