The Bird and The Bee will buzz into the Casbah

The Bird and The Bee’s enchanting new album salutes and subverts the music of Van Halen with wit and panache. Beck has a cameo on “Hot for Teacher.”

San Diego Union-Tribune

Aug. 29, 2019 10:18 AM PT

If anyone is qualified to re-invent the music of Van Halen, it’s The Bird & The Bee, which also has three albums of original music to its credit and performs in San Diego Thursday at the Casbah.

The proudly left-of-center pop group is the brainchild of Greg Kurstin, whose credits include co-writing “Hello,” the Grammy Award-winning song by Adele, and Inara George, the very talented daughter of Little Feat founder Lowell George.

The Bird and The Bee’s delightfully skewed new album, “Interpreting the Masters, Volume 2: A Tribute to Van Halen,” is the sequel to their 2010 homage, “Interpreting the Masters, Volume 1: A Tribute to Daryl Hall and John Oates.”

Their tribute to Van Halen — in its initial, David Lee Roth era — strikes a perfect balance between respectful homage and playful irreverence. The intro to “Jump” features a heavenly, Beach Boys-styled vocal chorale, while the song’s fleet guitar solo has been transposed to synthesizer. “Ain’t Talking ‘Bout Love” is given a synth-pop makeover that suggests a mash-up of Soft Cell and a more vocally capable Banarama.

“Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love” is re-cast as a sleek New Wave ditty, while the Eddie Van Halen guitar showcase “Eruption” is admirably re-done by Kurstin as a classically tinged grand piano piece. Kurstin also ably transposes the guitar arpeggios at the start of “Hot for Teacher” to keyboard. As an added bonus, Beck makes a cameo on the song, which takes on a very different tone when sung with urbane verve and a wink by George, rather than the perpetually leering Roth.

Kurstin, sadly, won’t be on board for The Bird and The Bee’s Thursday show at the Casbah. But that may give the golden-voiced George even more room to shine, as she simultaneously salutes and subverts the music of Van Halen with wit and panache. Alex Lilly & Samantha Sidley will do double-duty, opening the show and then returning to the stage as touring members of The Bird & The Bee.

The Bird and the Bee, with Alex Lilly & Samantha Sidley: 9:30 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 29. The Casbah, 2501 Kettner Blvd., Middletown. $16-$18. (619) 232-4355. casbahmusic.com

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George Varga

San Diego Union-Tribune music critic George Varga began drumming in rock bands at 12 and writing professionally about music at 15. A Louisiana native who grew up mostly in Germany, Varga has earned three Pulitzer Prize nominations for his writing at the U-T and is a voting member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In addition to providing live coverage of the Grammy Awards and festivals from Coachella and KAABOO to the 1994 edition of Woodstock, he has interviewed everyone from Miles Davis, Britney Spears and (over a game of chess) Ray Charles to Willie Nelson, Kanye West and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Anthony Davis. A triple first prize-winner for criticism and arts writing at the 2022 San Diego Press Club awards and a double first prize-winner at the 2022 San Diego Society of Professional Journalists awards, Varga is also a contributing writer for Jazz Times magazine and has written for Billboard, Spin and other publications. After attending San Diego City College and San Diego State University, he created and taught the 2002 UC San Diego Extension course, “Jazz in a Post-Ken-Burns World.” Varga has written liner notes for more than a dozen albums, including by jazz sax greats James Moody and Michael Brecker, and contributed two chapters to the book, “Dylan: Disc By Disc.”