The Bird(s) & The Bee(s)

By Tankboy in Arts & Entertainment on Jan 11, 2008 4:30PM

Chicago has always been friendly to glacial ice-pop a la The Aluminum Group and The Sea And Cake. What can we say? We must have Bacharach encoded in our communal DNA.

Tonight Los Angeles duo The Bird & The Bee float into Schubas to promote their latest EP Please Clap Your Hands. And, come to think of it, the EP's title is about as apt a description of the group's music as one would want. Consider the fact it opens with "Polite Dance Song," which opens with "Give it up for me please, put your hands in the air, if you know what's good for you, you wanna shake it like you just don't care." Granted, these aren't exactly groundbreaking lyrics taken on their own, but they're delivered with a femme fatale breathiness than makes Nina Persson look downright dowdy.

And the bed atop which the vocals lie is a carefully constructed melange of surgically precise beats mixed with warm pianos, trembling synths and the occasional horn blast. Overall it's quite captivating when it could have been precocious. The EP closes with a dead-on cover of The Bee Gees' "How Deep Is Your Love," but believe us when we say the song was never delivered so tenderly or with such great and honest conviction.

At other points the group sounds like a go-go dancing Stereolab, like a groovier Beth Orton, and like the cheekier female response to Serge Gainsbourg's come-ons. We're curious to see how this delicious precise pop translates to the stage.

The Bird &The Bee plays an 18+ show at Schubas tonight at 10 p.m.