Album Review

In the eclectic world of indie pop music, there’s nothing particularly new in the idea of mining historical periods of music for inspiration. But L.A. duo The Bird and the Bee have taken this notion to an extreme. Their second LP, Rayguns Are Not Just the Future, due out at the end of this month, is a love letter to the kitsch-pop of the mainstream ‘60s, even as it updates that swept-under-the-rug music for the twenty-first century.

The hopscotch-beat of “My Love,” for instance, displaces its own high orchestration optimism. The spacey synthesizers found on the bridge sound vaguely sci-fi, but Inara George’s lilting vocals return us to the sunny surface of an earth where things are innocently gee-whiz swell. “Diamond Dave,” a not-so-joking romantic confession to David Lee Roth, sounds as Mancini as Mancini, even if Greg Kurstin’s production is decidedly futuristic.

Listen to “My Love”
Listen to “Diamond Dave”

One of the more promising tracks here is “Whats in the Middle,” which keeps some of the previous song’s Mancini orchestration, throws in a little xylophone action a la Harry Breur, and stirs this with verses delivered in a kind of Blondie pseudo-rap. The album’s title track, a trip-hop meditation on the impending threat of a future out of our control — though it’s not clear just how future this future is, since we’re in such a muddled present on this album (maybe the future here is the present?). The song is based on the true story of our government’s successful production of the weapon in question, but luckily Kurstin’s synth raygun sounds about midway through the song are as ‘60s sci-fi as an episode of Lost in Space.

Listen to “What’s In the Middle”
Listen to “Rayguns Are Not Just the Future”

“Meteor” keeps up the sci-fi themes, echoing Inara George’s rather beautiful voice (yep, I said it) against the walls of a modern dance floor. “Baby” could be a Nancy Sinatra tune and an old soap commercial all at once, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The bouncy “You’re a Cold” could have been borrowed directly from any one of those last Hollywood musicals still trickling out into the early ‘70s. Compared to all this retro restyling, the album’s second-to-last track, “Birthday,” nearly sounds like a post-punk anthem.

Listen to “Meteor”
Listen to “You’re a Cold”
Listen to “Birthday”

I could do without “Love Letter to Japan,” with its kitschy Western take on Japanese pop (the real thing is simply better), and the band’s rather silly “Polite Dance Song,” which really is too cute by half, but overall, Rayguns Are Not Just the Future is an otherwise solid album of cheerful pop, which might be just what we need as we move into a more optimistic era.

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