Music Notes: The Bird And The Bee, The Bird And The Bee

May 15th, 2008

= 4 stars

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I’m a long admitted sucker for spacey-pop and women’s vocals, and my new personal sugar high is The Bird And The Bee. I was embarrassingly pulled in from left field via a Mac-themed viral video set to the aggressively hooky electro-pop masterpiece Again & Again, and it was soon game over after some short sample listens through iTunes.

Half of the duo is keyboardist Greg Kurstin who contributes pristine production and an exquisite melodic sense. The other half is Inara George, with a flawlessly in tune girly-voice, bearing nary a sign of the dreaded Antares Autotune. A perfect example is the chorus of My Fair Lady which recalls girl groups like the Lennon sisters. The combination is a record where no note sounds out of place, or at least, a rare situation where you don’t doubt each sound’s intent.

Other standouts are Fucking Boyfriend (Beth Orton on a bad day), I’m A Broken Heart (aptly congeals the Beach Boys, Burt Bacharach, and the Carpenters), and I Hate Camera (with several wonderfully contrasting, pulsing sections). Lyrically, it’s all rather dippy and surreal like the Cardigans meets Cornelius.

Not as successful are La la la, sounding like Suzanne Vega stuck in the sixties, and the jazzy misfire Birds and the Bees. Many of the songs are quite repetitive, without any long bridges or solos to break up the relentless electronic beats. The first song Again & Again makes a joke of it, however.

Luckily, most of the hooks presented here are genuinely worth repeating, as I have in the past few days, listening to this album again and again and again and again and…

Here’s a live version of Again And Again.