Photos | K. Ross Hoffman

How deep is your stage?

The Bird and the Bee are too big for the Angel. In both senses: the capacity crowd was crammed into all crannies of the long, skinny, “intimate” venue, while the band had barely enough room to squeeze on stage. They numbered five: the titular twosome — he with a three-keyboard-plus-laptop setup, she with scant space to swirl her skirt and sing — plus a back-up trio (“the Bird and the Bee Bitches”) squashed upstage in their coordinated babydoll dresses (yellow, blue, green) with white bows. It’s a good thing all their drums were virtual.

In fact, the place was so crowded that Inara George stepped on my foot at one point — when I was sitting halfway to the back of the room. (Granted, that was when she broke free of the stage and danced her way down the long aisle, during a top-notch cover of “I Can’t Go For That (No Can Do),” which they acknowledged as a special number by some “gentlemen from Philadelphia.”) Not that anybody let space issues get in the way of having a grand old time, particularly from that point on, when George, a positively giddy frontwoman, encouraged us to get out of our seats and dance up front. It was hard not to be cheery in the face of all that crisp, breezy pop, delivered with such energy and easy-going enthusiasm.

Inara’s jazzy, mellifluous voice was in fine form, as was her somewhat loopy fashion sense, while her counterpart, musical mastermind Greg Kurstin (the would-be Bee, or as his bandmates apparently call him, “the passive pervert”) mostly said nothing and sat there looking boyishly pretty and understatedly retro-hip. He did pull out a handful of effortless, tasty keyboard solos which the crowd were well-bred enough to applaud. And the B&B Bitches held it down too, on backing vocals, handclaps, and a bit of choreography, plus everything from glockenspiel to omnichord to a sweet fuzz guitar solo on “Love Letter to Japan.” (Guitarist Wendy Wang, the one in green, and Alex Lilly, in yellow, also opened the show as the peppy pop duo Obi Best, which made for an uncannily well-paired bill, and not just because Lilly’s voice is a dead ringer for George’s.)

Both George and her counterpart Kurstin have long and surprisingly convoluted music-biz back-stories. [She’s the daughter of a ’70s roots-rock semi-legend, with credits including the underheralded indie-folk duo Merrick and a recent, rather ponderous Van Dyke Parks orchestral pop collaboration. He’s a veteran of the ‘90s alterna-quirky outfits Geggy Tah and Action Figure Party, now a big-budget pop producer/songwriter for the likes of Kylie Minogue, Lily Allen, and Donna Summer.] But their WTF-titled new album, Ray Guns Are Not Just The Future, may just be the most satisfying thing either of them has ever been involved in, even if it’s not exactly substantial stuff. The album’s light-hearted, retro-tinged tunes — the best being mid-tempo numbers like “My Love,” “Birthday,” and the campy David Lee Roth ode “Diamond Dave” — made up the bulk of their set last night, with just a couple of oldies thrown in (notably the dreamy “Again and Again” from their debut.) They wrapped up with the twofer of “F*cking Boyfriend,” (their potty-mouthed break-out hit, albeit as a dance remix) and the similarly kinda-hokey new single “Polite Dance Song” (presumably a winking overcorrection), before coming back for a sing-along encore of the Bee Gees’ “How Deep Is Your Love.”

This entry was posted on Monday, March 9th, 2009 at 11:00 am and is filed under Music, Show. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.