The latest casualty of the streaming wars is The Bird and the Bee’s 2015 album Recreational Love, which unceremoniously disappeared from Qobuz sometime recently. The album still shows up, but lists all the tracks as “unavailable.” Usually this is a sign that the service has loaded a newer version of the album to select. Not so in this case.
Music by The Bird and the Bee can sometimes be hard to find. The band followed up their first volume of Interpreting the Masters, an album of Hall & Oates covers, with a volume of Van Halen covers. The first is readily available, the second, almost impossible to hear on any format other than used vinyl. All the album’s listed on the merch site that the band links to are sold out. When there are so many music services out there, it seems careless not to make your albums available somewhere digitally.
“Will You Dance?” is a track from the aforementioned Recreational Love and seems to be the one video produced from that album. The video stars Simon Helberg and Patton Oswalt and features a banger of a party that takes place in an office bathroom. High of the vibes from the party, Helberg gains the courage to kiss the object of his attraction, an office mate. The result looks like the “what not to do” section of a compliance video I just watched a couple of weeks ago on workplace harassment. In this case, all’s well that ends well and the party crew exits in a buoyant mood.
The song is an indie pop example par excellence, with a lively beat and rhythm driven cadence accentuated by the buttery smooth vocals of Inara George. It’s pure The Bird and the Bee and an excellent introduction to the sound of the LA band.
The Bird and the Bee - Will You Dance? (YouTube)
