The Bird and The Bee: An Exercise in Futility?

Despite writing about music on a semi-regular basis, I sometimes know far less about new artists than I probably should. I mean, there’s so much going on, it’s difficult to keep track and despite mounting evidence to the contrary, I do try to fit in having a life somewhere along the line.

All this means that until very recently, I knew next to nothing about LA synth duo, The Bird and The Bee. They’ve only just come to my attention due to the release of their new album, Interpreting the Masters Volume 1: A Tribute to Daryl Hall and John Oates. Although in the UK these days they’re only marginally more fashionable than Gary Glitter, Hall and Oates have had a string of hit albums and singles since the late 1970s and have enjoyed a huge amount of success in the USA during their career.

Now it’s time to express some sort of bias. It’s difficult to express an objective opinion on an act whose music you practically grew up with, and as a wee bairn, Hall and Oates were my Dad’s favourite musical act. Actually, they still are - I can probably recite the lyrics to I Can’t Go For That (No Can Do) in my sleep, though that doesn’t appear to be an award-winning party piece, unfortunately.

As you’ve probably deduced, The Bird and The Bee’s new album, ITMV1, is primarily made up of Hall and Oates songs; 8 of the 9 tracks are covers and the only original composition is said to be inspired by the Philadelphia pair. Covers albums are always a tricky proposition - what way do you go? Stray too far from the text and it could be construed as some sort of heresy, especially amongst die-hard fans. Stick like glue to the parent track and it’s difficult to see the point.

The Bird and The Bee seem to have settled for the worst of both worlds. It’s a given that the melodies and lyrics are going to be the same, but many of the rhythms, hooks and fills are lifted directly from the originals as well. However, The Bird and The Bee are heavy on the electronica, so there are synths and squelches in abundance. There are also the vocals of “The Bird”, Inara George, whose casual approach to emotion and depth is reminiscent of the Gallic insouciance that turns up on Nouvelle Vague tracks.

Nouvelle Vague are actually a good reference point, as they take well-loved songs and force them through their continental bossa nova filter. They may be not to everyone’s taste, but they strive to capture what makes the song work in the first place; something that, on this evidence, The Bird and The Bee miss altogether. A dark and robotic approach can be fine on its day, but these arrangements are completely lacking in warmth and when you’re tackling the back catalogue of a band such as Hall and Oates, it’s like mixing jam and cheese.

In simple terms, the beauty of Hall and Oates’ work is in what they themselves call, rock n’ soul. Sadly, The Bird and The Bee certainly don’t rock and they’ve taken it upon themselves to take every ounce of soul out of their subject matter. When it does come close to working, such as on Private Eyes, it still doesn’t compare to the original. Rather worryingly, the title of the album implies there may be an episode of Interpreting the Masters Volume 2... on the horizon.

In a sense, it’s admirable that The Bird and The Bee haven’t fallen into the all-too-easy trap of making a direct copy, but in removing all the heart out of these songs, they seem to have missed the point entirely. So, really, why bother? Whether it’s a stop-gap to mask a temporary lack of inspiration on an attempt at a genuine homage, it unfortunately adds nothing to the pantheon of popular music and only serves to showcase to the world that The Bird and The Bee can’t hold a candle to those they cite as inspirations.

I Learned The Hard Way

Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings - I Learned The Hard Way

released 26 April 2010 on Daptone

When you’re growing up, the music your parents listen to is, by default, rubbish. As your own personality starts to develop, you become keener to distance yourself from what you perceive as a suffocating influence and carve out your own identity. This doesn’t just apply to music, but clothes, attitudes and the company you keep. However, as you reach adulthood, it’s surprising how much you’re influenced by that music that you once dismissed, and a lot of the time, you learn to appreciate it for what it is and maybe in some cases, even like it. Anyway, that’s the excuse I’m giving for being a fan of Hall & Oates and for currently working through a fairly extreme Steely Dan phase.

A corollary of this hastily sketched-out theory is that everybody likes Motown and 60s soul music. Whether you grew up with those tunes or have assimilated them through your childhood, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn’t like the hits of Marvin Gaye, for example. This makes it surprising how few acts there are in today’s musical landscape who ape this particular style, especially considering the lack of originality around and artists‘ keenness to pilfer whatever they can like unsubtle magpies. It’s not the trendiest genre by any means, but if it makes people happy, you’d imagine it would be more than just a niche interest for the Class of 2010.

However, for some acts, it’s eternally 1969. Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings are such a band and it’s an approach which has won them many friends. They may not be deified as cultural trailblazers any time soon, but their albums sales are steady and they’re fast cultivating a glowing reputation on the live circuit.

If you haven’t heard them before, you’re wrong, you actually have. Well, maybe not Sharon Jones, but the Dap-Kings certainly; they’re best-known for recording and performing with Amy Winehouse circa Back to Black, and I Learned the Hard Way is their fourth album with Sharon Jones.

Recorded on an eight-track tape machine, I Learned the Hard Way is so indebted to the sounds of 1960s America, Greece is thinking of giving it a loan to bail it out. It doesn’t break any new ground whatsoever - the songs are tales of men, love and loss, and all sound familiar on the first listen but, as previously mentioned, this immediate recognition brings about a Pavlovian release of endorphins.

A wonderfully warm brass announcement opens I Learned the Hard Way and from that point, it’s a lesson from Soul Music 101. Sharon Jones has a voice which, while not necessarily as expressive as Amy Winehouse’s, is exponentially more powerful, and comparisons to Aretha Franklin are inevitable. Ronettes-style backing harmonies and “ooh”s are liberally applied to the majority of tracks, and The Dap-Kings show their professionalism with expert fills, licks and riffs at every turn, demonstrating a band at the peak of their powers who clearly love music. It makes you wonder: who else is doing this kind of thing anymore? In the UK, we only seem to have Beverly Knight, whose songs often sound cloying and trite, as everyone else is lured by the potential bounty pay-day of commercial, 21st Century R&B.

This isn’t to say that I Learned the Hard Way is a victory of style over substance. A feeling of brooding and impending menace pervades a large portion of the album, with the squealing, freeform jazz of the middle eight of Money probably the best example of this lurking uneasiness. While always a soul album first and foremost, it dips its toe into gospel (the urgent She Ain’t No Child No More), cabaret stylings(Without a Heart) and the glorious closer, Mama Don’t Like My Man, has the feel of a Nina Simone-interpreted 1940s standard. In fact, after battling with and against menfolk and their assorted myriad trials and tribulations during I Learned the Hard Way (it certainly seems an apt title), there’s a kind of delicious irony that, upon emerging bruised and bloodied on the other side, it’s Sharon Jones’ “mama” who puts the brakes on any blossoming relationship with withering matriarchal putdowns - “[she] don’t like he way he dresses, or the cigarettes he smokes / Don’t like the company he keeps, or the colour of his jokes”.

While Amy Winehouse’s distressed junkie chic keeps her on the front pages, she’ll always sell more records than Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, and that’s a real shame, because when I Learned the Hard Way really comes together - such as the dovetailing brass and guitar on instrumental The Reason - it truly is a wonderful thing. Sure, it may not be the hot, new sound of 2010, but this music is timeless, and even when the subject matter is modern (as it is on Money), it still sounds like it was first dreamt up by an old Mississippi delta bluesman.

In honesty, a whole album of perfectly-executed retro soul can be a little wearing, but the craftsmanship carries it through, and the sheer joy of hearing a band go against the grain in the way that this band do, makes I Learned the Hard Way fully deserving of your time.

I Want Music AND Pictures

Heard any good TV recently? If you have, chances are it was courtesy of those kind people at the BBC. Thoughtful, interesting music programming may be seen by some as a niche interest, but is it really so eclectic and unprofitable that the only broadcaster willing to create any is also a public service?

This week, Later… with Jools Holland began its 2493rd series on the BBC. For those who haven’t seen it, it’s a simple format, where five or six artists in a studio play a number of their tracks interspersed with informal interviews and a sprinkling of archive footage. Great lengths are taken to promote a laid-back ambiance, with celebrities (i.e. probably whoever was hanging around Television Centre that evening) drinking non-branded lager and looking like they’re enjoying themselves.

I enjoy Later… with Jools Holland and watch it most weeks when it’s on, but let’s not kid ourselves, it’s not really very good. The show’s commitment to diversity is admirable, but the screen time is allocated on a fame and success basis. That sounds fair enough, and it’s probably the best business strategy, but it meant that this week, Paul Weller’s stodge-rock being phoned in took centre-stage, while Gogol Bordello’s thrilling spectacle was almost an afterthought.

However, the opportunity to see musicians live on TV is never a bad thing, and the artist choice is fantastic compared to Jools’ awkward presenting and interviewing acumen. In the most recent show, whilst interviewing Paul Rodgers, best-known for his work with Free and recently of Queen, Jools’ opening question was, “Are you still enjoying everything as much as always?” Not exactly Frost and Nixon – it’s hard to believe that Holland has been fronting music TV shows since 1982.

If you want to look outside the tired format of Later… for decent music programming, the answer – as usual – is BBC4. They make great use of the vast BBC collection of live performances and their recent …Britannia series was riveting, as they told the story of different musical genres (prog, blues and synth-pop) and their rise to prominence in the UK.

However, other than that, it’s slim pickings. You can point to the seemingly ever-growing number of music channels on satellite TV, but these are something different altogether. At best, they’re a jukebox and at worst, little more than an advert or misogynistic soft-pornography for teenagers.

So, why is this? Admittedly, only the BBC have the vast swathes of historic live footage, but no commercial broadcasters seem to be willing to take a punt the same way Channel 4 did with The Tube in the 1980s. As far as I can tell, the only music programs on these channels today always seem to have the word ‘Vodafone’ or ‘T-Mobile’ rather conspicuously in their title. True, this doesn’t lead to a lack of quality in theory, but it certainly seems that way in practice. Oh, and don’t even think of mentioning The X Factor as an example of music programming on a commercial TV station. Regardless of whether you love it or loathe it, it’s got about as much to do with music as a ham sandwich.

This is where the hastily cobbled theory comes together. Although many TV stations make documentaries, they are often mass-market (of the celebrity or shocking real-life, I-was-born-with-two-faces variety) or more highbrow, which in relation to the arts means sculpture, painting, classical music and film. Pop music falls between the cracks, as it’s a mass-market commodity (everyone likes music in some form) but keen interest in it and its history is relatively unusual (not that many people would want to watch a 90 minute documentary about the introduction of electronic music to the charts; more fool them). All this means that pop music documentaries and programming aren’t profitable – not weighty enough for the intellectuals yet too specialised for the average viewer.

Of course, there may be a plethora of other, more valid reasons, but it seems a crying shame either way. In the modern world, where you can download the entire back catalogue of any artist at the click of a button and people are able to discover music a generation before their birth with ease, there are stories to be told and film to be seen. Surely there is an appetite and an audience for these tales, as well as people hungry for live performance and interviews. Maybe one of the commercial broadcasters could take a gamble on producing a show such as Spectacle, where a handful of artists perform, then talk about their career and inspirations with Elvis Costello. Since Costello seems pretty busy in the States these days, maybe we can get someone else to front the UK version – Mark E Smith anyone?

Whilst writing this article, I discovered that Spectacle has actually been aired on terrestrial TV in the UK. The first series was shown on Channel 4, with each episode aired once and only once, at around midnight. This from the channel that brought us a special program just to give the UK its first full-length viewing of Michael Jackson’s Thriller video? This may be a losing battle…

Sleep Mountain

The Kissaway Trail - Sleep Mountain

released 8 March 2010 on Bella Union

The problem with an artist or scene becoming unexpectedly popular is that in its wake, a host of inferior imitators inevitably spawn. After Nirvana broke through in the early 90s, it appeared that anyone wearing plaid in Seattle could get a record deal. More recently, the success of Britpop led to many a lame duck, and the legacy of Coldplay and (albeit, briefly) Travis going stratospheric at the turn of the Century would appear to be Snow Patrol and similarly pallid “indie” of that ilk.

With all this in mind, please welcome The Kissaway Trail: Denmark’s answer to Arcade Fire. Well, that is, if “answer” means “infinitely substandard version of”. On Sleep Mountain, The Kissaway Trail’s solution to a lack of inspiration is apparently to ask themselves what Win Butler would do, and ham-fistedly attempt to replicate it. Unsurprisingly, such an approach does not a good album make.

From the very beginning of track one, SDP, it becomes clear that The Kissaway Trail have their eyes and ears firmly set on the boxes labelled “anthemic” and “soaring”. As well as Arcade Fire, there are shades of Frightened Rabbit as SDP gently chugs along, always threatening to break into something more attention-grabbing but never quite doing so. Aside from a momentary change of pace and some bells, there really is nothing worth remarking on. Unfortunately, that seems to be a fair summary of Sleep Mountain in a nutshell.

The vocals on Sleep Mountain are somewhere in-between Tim DeLaughter and a eunuch being strangled underwater. The lyrics are little better, full as they are of half-ideas and meaningless phrases. Perhaps this is too harsh on a band who don’t have English as their first language, but lines such as Beat Your Heartbeat’s “If you could change your heart, if you could change your words, if you could change, never like they say” are, frankly, laughable, and more suited to The Eurovision Song Contest.

To give The Kissaway Trail their due, they’re not shy when it comes to incorporating a multitude of instruments into their songs and they occasionally have their moments. The start of New Year recalls Doves’ Snowdon and cute glockenspiel is well utilised on Friendly Fire. At times, Sleep Mountain could be the work of a more mundane Grandaddy, or perhaps a restrained Polyphonic Spree (if you can imagine such a thing). Alas, all the bands which are reference points or potential comparisons are far more interesting and multi-dimensional than The Kissaway Trail.

In fact, it wouldn’t be an enormous surprise if it were the case that Sleep Mountain had been created by focus group. The Kissaway Trail could have a large whiteboard in the centre of their headquarters, which just has the word “epic” in the centre. Sadly, Sleep Mountain would probably be better if it had been designed around the word “Eric”. For the most part, the songs featured here follow a strict formula: slow start, add vocals, remove most instruments for sensitive vocal harmonising, embellish with a few frills, then repeat for about three minutes longer than your listeners’ attention span. The main exception to this is the percussion, where the drummer seems to be the only band member interested in doing something different. That is, unless you count the album’s only unexpected chord change and a 12/8 time signature in Philadelphia.

Sleep Mountain isn’t entirely unenjoyable; its two main crimes are that it’s too safe with its simple chord patterns and unimaginative riffs, and that it’s too in thrall to the records that have inspired it. It could do with a large dose of urgency and inspiration, and even then that would probably only be enough to mildly pique your interest. Listening to The Kissaway Trail is an ultimately hollow experience and one that seems pointless in a world where there is so much better music in existence.

Volume Two

She & Him - Volume Two

released 5 April 2010 on Double Six

Zooey Deschanel is an extremely beguiling character. As an actress, she seems to portray the sort of girl that’s incredibly easy to fall in love with and has wide eyes that can look right through you. Witness her as dreamy and unfathomable Summer Finn in Marc Webb’s (500) Days of Summer and this phenomenon will surely become apparent to you too. However, this may be simply an example of the phenomenon known as Manic Pixie Dream Girl,

whereby film and literature personas are specifically tailored to appeal to young men. I’m a young man, I’m being manipulated and I’m not sure I care.

Anyway, the more astute amongst you will have noticed this is meant to be an album review rather than a thesis on stars of the small screen. In some ways, to bring up Deschanel’s career as an actress at the very beginning of this article is unfair; She & Him’s début album, Volume One, was an extremely accomplished record of retro-pop, easy to warm to and hard to forget. The fact that Deschanel competently handled lead vocals and wrote the majority of the songs earned her the right to have She & Him considered a serious band in their own right rather than a vanity project. She succeeded where many before her have failed miserably and removed any doubts over her capabilities with aplomb.

On the other hand, to mention Deschanel’s day job is very apt when discussing her music. To an extent, all lead singers are actors playing a part in their aim to entertain, yet Deschanel seems to display this more nakedly than most, as well she might given her chosen profession. In fact, it appears that Volume Two could well be the first aural manifestation of Manic Pixie Dream Girl; the melodies are sugar-sweet, there are addictive hooks in abundance but Deschanel’s voice takes centre stage. Her vocal range is perhaps too limited to take on some of the notes she gamely attempts, but the straining to reach those extremes, the slight cracks in her voice (often reminiscent of PJ Harvey or Björk), the enthusiasm and her resoluteness in dealing with some of the in-song protagonists could well have been created to appeal to young men. I’m a young man, I’m being manipulated, and I’m not sure I’m going to fall for it this time.

In She & Him, the Deschanel persona is one of a down-home good-old American country gal, who everyone likes and wishes well. Volume Two often conjures an image of an awkward frontwoman shuffling from side to side whilst nervously clutching the hem of a blue-checked cotton dress. If that picture doesn’t work for you, the other comparison that springs to mind is that of Sookie Stackhouse in the HBO seriesTrue Blood - the girl that everybody loves and no-one quite understands. This act of the ingénue is cultivated by songs of regret, loss and defiance that are perky, full of great harmonising backing vocals and above all, cute. If you think this could get pretty wearing over an entire album, then you’d be correct.

Ironically, repeated listens to Volume Two reveal that the real star of the show is Deschanel’s co-conspirator, M Ward. His thoughtful, considered and imaginative production prevents the album becoming an amorphous sickly mass and when he lends his reedy vocals to Ridin’ In My Car, the welcome change in tone (as well as the Phil Spector-style heavy echo of the percussion) leads to the best song of the collection.

Where Volume One was strongest was simply the quality of the songs (try getting Why Do You Let Me Stay Here? out of your head in a hurry), yet there’s something sadly lacking about Volume Two, and what previously sounded like finely-crafted homage is now often more like impotent pastiche. It certainly has its moments though, the juxtaposition of simple piano, pop hooks and slide guitar makes In the Suneminently likeable, Lingering Still has a pleasing semi-Hawaiian sound, and the bouncy cover of Skeeter Davis’ Gonna Get Along Without You Now is more infectious than the bubonic plague in a 14th Century sewer.

Deschanel clearly knows how to write a song, and it would appear she’s a disciple of The Beatles - witness the chord changes on Over It Over Again or the intro to Don’t Look Back, which is similar to The Beatles’ own In My Life. Unfortunately, the often banal and occasionally clunky lyrics (“running away from you is like running a business” - ouch) mean that She & Him have a tendency to come across like an inferior Rilo Kiley circa More Adventurous. M Ward’s sweet pedal steel and astute instrument choice can only support Volume Two so far, and it’s thanks to him that the album doesn’t end up sounding like the cast-offs from the soundtrack of Grease. Authenticity isn’t the all-encompassing core of good songwriting that some critics may have you believe, but on the evidence of Volume Two, She & Him are too often on autopilot and too intent on playing a part.