The Bird and the Bee

A quick follow up to their self-titled debut LP, The Bird and the Bee’s five-song EP, Please Clap Your Hands is a charming, sometimes surprisingly potent effort. While making no bones in their attempt to be the coolest musicians you listen to today, singer Inara George – as alluring as she is bound to be disinterested in me – and multi-instrumentalist Greg Kurstin escape ridicule because they are just that cool. Recorded in Los Angeles and “some hotel room in Amsterdam,” the EP has the sound of a spy movie about it. Why “some hotel room?” Why Amsterdam? Are they on the run? And from who? The lyrics engage and interest but don’t push the allusion. Anyway, I long for them to be in French, that they might transcend the duo’s sound one push further and suddenly become a renegade sountrack to Cleo From 5 to 7 or A Woman is a Woman. Cigarette smoke everywhere.

Hands is certainly a polished effort and I don’t hold it against them for the most part. After all, it is only the imitation of a fine meal that one turns away not the fine meal itself. The passive but earnest – and catchy as the plague – vocals of “Polite Dance Song” and wide-eyed keyboard of “So You Say” are reasons enough to let the EP play itself through a few times with each listen. The former repeats the title’s invitation, “Would you please clap your hands?” while also interrupting to note, “Pardon me/ The music is moving/ Moving from left to right.” That is, Bird and Bee insist, pay attention. This music is moving for you. Polite indeed.

The duo is on firmer terra when maintaining this movement. “The Races” sounds like the band on a rainy day – a serious, no-laughs rainy day – out of cigarettes and coffee, and while perhaps beautiful (or at least pretty) it does not engage as tenaciously, it passes too easily from memory. Likewise closer, “How Deep Is Your Love.” Both songs sparkling too brightly (too daintily) to stomach unless alone. One wonders what some grit in the production might do for the songs’…tenderness.

Hands‘ precise instrumentation and altogether elegant demeanor are pop enough to pang an old cavity and start a new one. “So You Say” surges with a determined likeability as though it’s the soundtrack for the summer teen movie’s First Day of School/Attractive Young People montage. Again, I don’t hold this against them, that they are crafting this desirable sound. I’ll roll down the window and thump the sill in time. “If I hit you hard,” George’s love-myself-better-than-you vocals wonder, “like elementary school/ Not sure of what you’ll do/ I want to be with you.” I want to be with you, too, Inara. I’ll bring the coffee and cigarettes. Do be polite enough to show.

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