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 Caught in the Carousel "There will be music despite everything"
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The Bird and the Bee
Interpreting the Masters Volume 1: A Tribute to Daryl Hall and John Oates
Blue Note
One month ago I would have deemed anyone crazy. Mad. Too unstable, kicking in chairs and knocking down tables in a restaurant...had I been told that I would soon utter these four words: "I blame Bryan Ferry." But blame him I most certainly do. Before his 1973 album These Foolish Things there really were no such things as "cover albums" as we know them now. So original was the idea that, according to many sources, upon learning of Ferry's master plan, Bowie rushed out the more successful but utterly inferior Pin Ups.When Ferry has failed in his covers it has been when the works have been too reverential as with 2007's Dylanesque, a disappointment because the material itself was unworthy of being treated like such reliquary as Ferry had done in the past with his cover of "Jealous Guy" and his homage to the golden era of songwriting, 2000's As Time Goes By. His grand successes have been the wry, tongue-in-cheek versions of "It's My Party," "Sympathy for the Devil," and "Don't Worry Baby." But in every case the listener understood early on the tone of the work.
The Bird and the Bees' latest album is a mouthful in title alone: Interpreting the Masters Volume 1: A Tribute To Daryl Hall And John Oates. And perhaps that's best because there is no sustenance to be found in this album, an album that is so devoid of originality and whimsy that the listener is completely at a loss to fathom why is this duo covering that duo, why Volume 1 and whatever happened to the group Nu Shooz?
Look, yes, there is—and always will be—magic to such pop confections as "Rich Girl" and "She's Gone," not to mention "Sara Smile." However, there certainly can't be much chance of any sort of praise being heaped upon "Maneater" and "Private Eyes." The other tracks covered here are, as they were then, minor crimes, "Kiss Is On My List" and "I Can't Go For That," being two of the better-known titles. But in this day and age there are certainly at least 3-5 different Greatest Hits collections by Hall and Oates out there already. Why this tribute album? It lacks the collective awe of all-star tributes to Leonard Cohen, I'm Your Fan or The Carpenters If I Were a Carpenter. There is even more disappointingly, a complete lack of humor to the approach. Sure, it would be bad taste to mock a duo whose work you are recording a full album of and who is pop royalty (albeit holding court at the lesser end of the spectrum). And even if the intention in this post-ironic world was to adhere to the pure pop tastiness, there is seemingly no love for the music at all. One never gets the feeling that Greg Kurstin and Inara George have always loved these songs—even the cheesier ones—so much so that they would often roll the windows up in their Honda Prelude, circa 1982 when the songs came on, for fear of loving such commercial stuff so publicly. In fact, the complete absence of the lovely airiness of The Bird and the Bee's earlier works like "Again and Again" and their refusal to harden the edges of the Hall and Oates numbers sound as if the very existence of these songs were happened upon by Kurstin and George not in the dark of a teenage bedroom waiting for the phone to ring while hoping the DJ calls out their request, but rather they were first heard about a year or so ago during an overly-long stint in the waiting room at their dentist's office.
—Thomas Cooney
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