Review The Bird And The Bee
The Bird And The Bee

1. Year: 2007
2. Style: INDIE
3. Rating:

The Bird and The Bee's music is simple, catchy and unabashedly retro

Fear not. Sunshine is here. The Bird and The Bee are a new band both from the sunshine state and with a sunshine sound. Essentially the private recordings of SoCal duo Inara George and Greg Kurstin, The Bird and The Bee's debut self-titled album was recorded over three years in Kurstin's home studio, and it has the kind of intimate sound such a personal project should. Two years ago, a Los Angeles singer-songwriter Inara George burst onto the scene with a remarkably polished debut album called All Rise. The daughter of Little Feat frontman Lowell George, she was blessed with an effortlessly pretty voice and her imbuing simple folk-pop with loads of atmosphere and minor-key foreboding. After that relise George decided to work on a new project with one of her players from the All Rise sessions multi-instrumentalist Greg Kurstin, best-known as a longtime Beck sideman. It was a smart move. Calling themselves The Bird and The Bee, George and Kurstin make music that is simple, catchy and unabashedly retro.

The collection emits a general disdain with the way that men and women behave

There are ten tunes on the album, each poppier and smoother than the last, will you give a waft of warm summer breeze that you may be longing for this passing winter. Tunes like Fucking Boyfriend will have you sashaying across your apartment's frigid floor, just as the album's first single Again Again will give you ample reason to curl underneath your comforter and pretend you're laying under the sun. That is, if you remember what the sun is these days. Luckily, The Bird and The Bee may have just arrived in time to remind you. Though the music treads lightly, riding upon the breezy currents of The Bird and the Bee's multilayered arrangements, the lyrics penned by Inara George and Greg Kurstin pack a punch. The coy but aggressive manner in which George sings them only enhances their bite. Although George also demonstrates her vulnerability (on My Fair Lady, for example), it is her angst and her frustration with relationships that fuels much of The Bird and The Bee's material. She oscillates between love and hate on Again Again, and she relays her weariness with this repetitive pattern on Because. Overall, the collection emits a general disdain with the way that men and women behave, and her answer is simply to level the playing field by standing up for herself as an individual.

The Bird And The Bee are eager to claim themselves as the present face of jazz

It's anyone's guess how to define jazz in the XXI century. Most people's conception of the genre these days seems to be some conflated version of New Orleans, bebop, and fusion a traditionalist view catered to by most of the jazz clubs still in business. For those who see jazz as a constantly evolving organism, arguments can be made that the sound's spirit either survives in the places where avant-garde meets noise, or has been dissected and spliced into the DNA of hip-hop or electronic music. Even jazz's flagship label, Blue Note, can't really decide where the genre's current form lies, having placed bets equally on soft-pop like Norah Jones, curatorial nostalgia acts like Wynton Marsalis, and now modern-minded kids like The Bird and The Bee. This isn't an unwilling mantle for the band; beyond their noteworthy label allegiance, Inara George and Greg Kurstin are eager to claim themselves as the present face of jazz. In some way it’s worked. Anyhow, the album has turned to be different in style: from The Beach Boys to the Brazil electronic of 60s, and so interesting, and no doubt, noteworthy.