The Bird and The Bee’s new album in their Interpreting the Masters series reveals that Greg Kurstin and Inara George are closet fans of Van Halen. A surprised William Dart takes a listen.
Photo: Alexa Nikol Curran, No Expectations Records
Back in the 1960s, any mention of birds and bees would have had me humming away with this catchy little popsicle. At the time, I was only familiar with a cover version by the English singer, Alma Cogan . . . but it’s so much hipper in its original outing by the American Jewel Akens.
These days, if birds and bees end up in the same phrase, with musical associations attached, I’m more inclined to think of the American duo, The Bird and the Bee.
It’s a partnership of Greg Kurstin and Inara George that surfaced 13 years ago with a sun-drenched debut album in which lightness was all pervading.
George’s vocals were the perfect combination of athleticism and elegance while, behind her, Kurstin stirred up his gossamer ripples of endlessly explorative sound.
And in one track that spelt out the group’s name, they even revealed just how much they really cared for our little friends in nests and hives.
When I first presented this album on New Horizons, it provided a bit of sweet tuneful release after some soul-baring Rickie Lee Jones.
These were songs that hovered over details like a humming bird poised for a nectar bliss-out, and they positively buzzed with style in whirls of pop and loungey jazz. Their twists and turns were, more often than not, deliciously dizzy and not afraid to dispense some food for more serious thought.
Greg Kurstin and Inara George consolidated their music further on their second album, 2009’s Ray Guns are Not Just the Future. A collection of such confidence that it announced itself, boldly, with a 28-second ‘Fanfare’.
Going back to this sophomore release, I’m hearing the chiselled bop of classic David Byrne more than I did at the time, especially in the measured spikiness of a song like ‘Polite Dance Song’.
And so many of the tracks, thanks to Greg Kurstin’s wizardry, open up like the most tantalizing of sonic jewel-boxes.
The tone throughout the album is cool and wry, without a gesture or inflection out of place. When Inara George contemplates whether we might not have to wait too long to avail ourselves of ray guns, Kurstin paints in the background with a suitably futuristic brush.
The Bird and the Bee’s third album in 2010 was an unpredictable departure, the first of a projected series titled Interpreting the Masters.
Kurstin and George put their own songwriting aside and decided to doff their caps to another duo who were responsible for some of the hottest dance floor hits of the 70s and 80s.
If you’re of the right generation, this particular number may almost define 1981 and, who knows, you might be tempted to get up and do a few moves on your own domestic dance floor.
Kurstin and George may have been a little too young to be haunting the LA discos at that time, dancing to Hall and Oates’ ‘Private Eyes’, but their intense admiration and love for the music of these two men sounds out from the start.
Every beat of the original is beautifully caught with its own electrified shiver. And I can’t better a description that I used in New Horizons at the time, likening it to someone boogying on an India-rubber floor with instrumental contributions sounding as if R2D2 and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop were having a jam session.
Inara George does her best Karen Carpenter job on the song ‘Sara Smile’, but with the vocal equivalent of a lo-fat timbre that puts a curb on excessive creaminess.
The casual gender-switching certainly had me smiling back in 2010 and, with the passing of nine years, in our times of ever increasing diversity, it’s even more reverberant.
Best of all, it’s a remarkably uncluttered take on the song, once you’ve navigated your way through one of the wooziest intros that Greg Kurstin has ever concocted.
Darryl Hall and John Oates with their blue-eyed soul must have seemed an obvious choice for Kurstin and George’s first volume of Interpreting the Masters.
Now, with the second instalment just released, I suspect that even their staunchest fans might be raising an eyebrow. In 2019 they’ve settled upon the songs of the heavy metal band, Van Halen.
Speaking personally, as someone who has never braved a rock concert mosh pit, these men and their music seem a daunting challenge to say the least.
It’s so much easier to experience them with the safety net of video screen and volume control as Eddie and the boys sweat, flaunt hairy chests and rent the air asunder in songs such as ‘Jump’, ‘Running with the Devil’, and ‘Hot for Teacher’.
Not since Frank Zappa joined forces with Grand Funk Railroad has there been such an unlikely coming together.
How on earth, you could wonder, might these very gentrified and cerebral pop souls cope with the priapic surge of Eddie van Halen’s guitar?
This particular Van Halen track, aptly titled “Eruption”, is fearlessly taken on by The Bird and the Bee, quickly picking up on some of the Bach-styled flourishes which suggest that Eddie Van Halen might have been a closet Early Music man.
So for Greg Kurstin this is just the musical acorn that he needs to envisage the piece as a mighty piano toccata. It’s quite a spin and a few brows might wrinkle as listeners try to identify some of his flying quotes, before the music bubbles on to the next one.
The piano is very much at the core of things when we move to Kurstin and George’s version of ‘You Really Got Me’.
This vignette of stiff-upper-lip lust and frustration is a quintessential Ray Davies song, a big hit for The Kinks in 1964.
On video, Van Halen turns well-governed desire into arrant lust, dispensed by a bare-chested David Lee Roth, punctuated with slashes from Eddie Van Halen’s very phallic guitar.
Not so with The Bird and the Bee. This time around there are cups of tea rather than shots of bourbon on the bar.
And, gender play aside, Inara George seems to be in something of a critique mode, closer to the clipped vocals of Ray Davies than the Roth rave of Van Halen.
Whatever the motives, and whatever the results, Greg Kurstin and Inara George have immense fun with their new project.
Van Halen’s 1984 song ‘Hot for Teacher’ was one of the less-than-illustrious tracks from an album titled 1984. That’s the one with the gasp-inducing picture of a baby smoking a cigarette on its cover.
The song's theme of students leering at and lusting for the teacher is a dodgy subject today but these guys were out to shock. The spoken lines that punctuate the song sound as if we’re privy to some Trumpian jock-talk in a locker room.
In probably the most radical turn of their album, The Bird and the Bee open this number out, enlisting Beck to do the narrating with their new and original script, which makes quite a tale of it, complete with literary references for devotees of Herman Meville.
It’s personalized too. At one point one wonders whether Beck is playing the producer, chiding Kurstin for misplaced enthusiasm. Although a real treat awaits after George’s second verse with a jazzy piano solo that would give Art Tatum a few runs for his money.
The Bird and the Bee’s tribute to the glory that was once Van Halen ends with a curiosity, a song that originally appeared on the duo’s Ray Guns album.
We’re told that this number ‘Diamond Dave’ — the title of David Lee Roth’s final studio album in 2003 — charts a young girl’s infatuation with the hirsute heavy metaller. Are these words and feelings really those of George herself? She was only 4 when Van Halen released its first album.
Whatever, there’s Twitter proof that the man himself liked the tribute, although I find The Bird and the Bee’s 2009 video for the number equivocal, as a stony-faced George sits at a desk, auditioning a succession of wannabe Roths.
The original number is clever as you might expect, with an opening that could be stalking around a Bach Passacaglia and a bloom that’s mere millimetres away from a Michel Legrand love song.
When Kurstin and George revisit it for the finale of their new Van Halen tribute, it’s starkly present, for just voice and piano, live and with boxy sound. There’s a self-conscious awkwardness to the piano at times, although my ears hear Bach even more strongly in its introduction.
Music Details
'Song title' (Composer) – Performers
Album title
(Label)
'The Birds and the Bees' (Stuart) – Jewel Akens
The Sunshine Collection - 18 Songs for a Sunny Day 2002
(K-Tel)
'Birds And The Bees' (George, Kurstin) – The Bird And The Bee
The Bird And The Bee
(Blue Note)
'I Hate Camera' (George, Kurstin) – The Bird And The Bee
The Bird And The Bee
(Blue Note)
'Fanfare' (George, Kurstin) – The Bird And The Bee
Ray Guns Are Not Just The Future
(Blue Note)
'Ray Gun' (George, Kurstin) – The Bird And The Bee
Ray Guns Are Not Just The Future
(Blue Note)
'Private Eyes' (Hall, Oates) – Hall & Oates
The Very Best Of Hall & Oates
(Blue Note)
'Private Eyes' (Hall, Oates) – The Bird And The Bee
Interpreting The Masters Volume 1: Hall & Oates
(Blue Note)
'Sara Smile' (Hall, Oates) – The Bird And The Bee
Interpreting The Masters Volume 1: Hall & Oates
(Blue Note)
'Eruption' (Anthony et al) – Van Halen
The Very Best of Van Halen
(Warner Music)
'Eruption' (Anthony et al) – The Bird And The Bee
Interpreting the Masters, Volume 2: Van Halen
(No Expectations)
'You Really Got Me' (Davies) – The Bird And The Bee
Interpreting the Masters, Volume 2: Van Halen
(No Expectations)
'Hot for Teacher' (Anthony et al) – The Bird And The Bee
Interpreting the Masters, Volume 2: Van Halen
(No Expectations)
'Diamond Dave' (George, Kurstin) – The Bird And The Bee
Interpreting the Masters, Volume 2: Van Halen
(No Expectations)
