“People in the UK are a bit more excited about us, I don’t know, maybe it’s because we’re American.” This is the kind of endearing, and refreshingly honest endeavor that serves The Bird And The Bee well.
The band, alias Greg Kurstin and Inara George, relinquish all complexities in favour of untold simplicity in their sonic approach. From Sacremento, on their way to the next date supporting Lily Allen, singer Inara takes a moment to reflect on their dynamic. “We sit at the piano and Greg will play chords and I’ll sing a melody. Sometimes the chords direct the melody and sometimes the melody directs the chords. I think we kinda just like to please ourselves. Whatever concepts are interesting to us at the time, anything goes. As long as we like it, that’s our rule.”
“It’s been great and we realized there are so many kids in the audience and they’re so enthusiastic. It’s really a great thing to play in front of a younger crowd.”
Both Inara and Greg ended up at this point from different musical backgrounds. Greg was a jazz piano prodigy before working and producing for the likes of Beck, The Flaming Lips and Peaches. Inara is the daughter of Lowell George, front man of the eclectic 70’s Southern rock band Little Feat. She began her solo career releasing 2005’s critically acclaimed ‘All Rise’, when she met Greg in LA. The new album was a labour of love and has been eagerly anticipated from those in the know for a few years now. “The reason why it took so long was because we just recorded a couple of songs, we didn’t really think we were going to make a record and then we recorded a couple more and we thought why not finish it. It took a lot of stolen afternoons of three years.”
The result is a barrel of hand-picked ripened ditties, coaxing all kinds of wistful romanticism. Songs like ‘Again And Again’ and current single ‘Fucking Boyfriend’ have undercurrents of the dreamy and eccentric, but also of the heartwarming. With such a colossal divide in their musical approaches, playing support to Lily Allen must be a fairly bizarre concept. “It’s been great and we realized there are so many kids in the audience and they’re so enthusiastic. It’s really a great thing to play in front of a younger crowd.” Greg joins us to regale some on-the-road antics: “Lily Allen’s keyboardist took all his clothes off and jumped in a fountain in New Orleans. He jumped in the fountain and we all got kicked out,” he laughs.
From their idiosyncratic live shows, complete with identikit backing singers and ultramodern onstage garb, it is evident that visuals are important. Their video for ‘Again And Again’, which revels in the vapidity of suburbia, is a talking point for Greg. “We saw that movie Two For The Road with Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney in the 60s and that movie was kinda a big inspiration for that video.”
With masses of sophisticated futurism, The Bird And The Bee make Sixties nostalgia sound like the next frontier.
The debut self-titled album was released in March on Regal records.
Bookmark with:
Readers Comments:
Be the first to comment on this article.