THE BIRD AND THE BEE - The Bird And The Bee

The duo we're about to discuss owes its very existence to Mike Andrews, producer of the solo album by the female half of the pair, and a mutual friend who brought the two together. The girl, Inara George, recorded the debut mentioned above ("All Rise", a solid showing of colourful pop) at Greg Kurstin's recording studio, where the two discovered they shared a love for jazz atmospheres and vaguely tropical music. From this came The Bird And The Bee and their offspring: one of the most upbeat, sparkling pop records heard so far, sitting at the crossroads of a variety of stylistic approaches.

Twilit sensations, tinged with a strong crepuscular flavour, blend together with varied, highly imaginative rhythms. Electronics, often present, underpin a skilful compositional precision rooted essentially in pop; an almost obsessive attention to production never lets the melodies lapse into banal, breezy little tunes. The influences, naturally, abound. One could cite the more minimal Everything But The Girl or the adorable Ivy of "Apartment Life", just to make the picture a little less hazy. It's worth stressing, though, that the material on offer here steers well clear of merely rehashing tired song-formula clichés, and instead wrings every possibility out of the genre, achieving a result that's anything but negligible.

The opening "Again & Again" is the best possible calling card. A keyboard line, paired with frenzied clapping, kicks off the party. Guitar, fizzy synth, and Inara's tireless voice give body to a perfect pop song, all packed into barely three minutes.

The slightly more measured approach of "Birds & The Bees" doesn't distort the soul of this music, which adapts very coherently to whatever tonal direction the two artists want to take. The voice is a fundamentally crucial element, revealing Inara's great expressive potential, capable of very effective tonal shifts in interpretation, aided too by certain filters that alter the sonic effect of her words.

The instrumental richness never tips over into "excess" — the various elements are dosed just right, and even though the final arrangement is quite dense, there's never a sense of a dead patch.

Still strongly electronic footprints in "Fucking Boyfriend", built on a keyboard line that outlines the initial structure, later fleshed out with drum-machine, xylophones and hand-clapping; the latter also widely used throughout the rest of the track, right to the end. Tales of romantic adventures, nursery rhymes that sound like jokes, perhaps not hugely original, but backed by a self-irony of real value, one that will surely make purists wrinkle their noses, where the line of banality is never crossed.

The melodic sweetness of "I'm A Broken Heart" has an almost naive purity, so delicate, reaching out toward the more sensitive listener. Describing the intrigue hidden within the inlaid details of this music is no easy task. The moment "La La La" arrives, it's hard not to be surprised; the link with what we said about the previous track is obvious: a faint vein of solemnity manages to creep in without ever feeling forced; and indeed what we get is a pair of compositions that wrest the scene from silence with great grace and clarity. And what this central section shares with the following "My Fair Lady" is precisely this angelic aura, which, in this case though, leans a touch more toward playful shades.

At this point we're probably looking at the album's finest track, "I Hate Camera". A delightfully charming "Pa Pa Pa" is a vocal sample of understated genius, underpinned by a constant shift in rhythm, between pauses and sudden bursts marked out by an electronic sound. Worth highlighting is the beauty of the vocal sample, scattered here and there across the track's 3 minutes: a truly inspired touch.

The foray into a hip-hop leaning toward electronic soul (another point in favor of Inara's voice) delivers a different kind of emotion, to the point that "Because" feels almost like an outlier, though without losing any value, since the execution remains precise and never out of focus.

The penultimate track, "Preparedness", recalls the legendary Sneakster of "Pseudo-Nouveau/Fifty Fifty", especially in its graceful use of digital rhythm, a perfect marriage of dream-pop and synthetic tendencies that reconcile after almost 10 years apart.

The closer ("Spark") melts into a lake of melodic tenderness: an ambient-pop that unleashes its magic with an imaginative touch. Small digital hiccups, gusts that smell of dreams, melodies that leave their mark; the way only This Mortal Coil knew how to write.

A moment to reflect once it's over. What's left of this debut? We gather up a vague multitude of sensations that fade from one instant to the next, letting a glimpse of beauty shine through, hidden in a fleeting, precious fragment, like the good half hour of music we've just heard.

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23/06/2007