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Concert Fri Jan 11 2008
Let Me Tell You 'Bout
The Bird and the Bee (I’m not sure who is who) write the kind of pitch-perfect pop melodies that stick in your craw, and that would be supremely annoying were they not so lovely. While they inhabit the same boy-girl, keys-beats-vox universe of the Blow, Mates of State and the Spectacles, Greg Kursten and Inara George bring a more-disciplined jazz approach to pop music. They reportedly hooked up over a love of jazz standards, and indeed it sounds like they’re penning their own standards as they go along. Stand-out single, “Polite Dance Song”, is a buoyant number that isn’t terribly danceable but is populated by rudimentary dance lyrics, delivered with polite indifference (“Give it up for me, please/ Put your hands in the air/ If you know what’s good for you, you wanna shake it like you just don’t care’). If I can lob any complaint in the direction of the Bird and the Bee, it’s that the music is too perfect, too measured. It doesn’t really feel lived in or breathed through, not quite jazz but certainly not rock’n’roll.
Such criticisms can be easily dispelled by a killer live performance, though, so be sure to check out the Bird and the Bee this very evening at Schubas, where they’ll be performing with a larger ensemble. Show starts at 10pm, and Charlie Wadhams opens.
