Lady & Bird is the
intriguing, if slight, side project of Keren Ann Zeidel and Bardi
Johannsson. Zeidel, an Israel-born Frenchwoman who now shuttles between
Paris and New York, has two domestic solo releases under her belt: her
English-language debut, Not Going Anywhere (2004), and Nolita, its half-French, half-English follow-up (2005).
American critics slobbered mightily over both albums, anointing Zeidel the
reigning anti-diva of the expat underground. Johannsson, who sings in the
Icelandic group Bang Gang, is less famous but never overshadowed. His
papery rasp blends perfectly with Zeidel’s whispery alto; at times,
the two sound so uncannily alike that you’d swear they were siblings.
Zeidel and Johannsson describe Lady & Bird as a
“children’s story for adults,” and its titular
protagonists are a couple of helium-voiced innocents trapped in adult
bodies who suspect that the external world is an illusion; eventually they
decide to jump off a bridge together to test their hypothesis.
Epistemologically speaking, the CD’s nine-minute capper, “La
Ballade of Lady & Bird,” is just plain silly; imagine a
bong-fueled redaction of The Little Prince. As a pop song, it’s not so bad, although the
speeded-up vocals devolve from cute to cloying well before the track
reaches the halfway mark. Fortunately, the overly precious concept mostly takes
a back seat to the music, which is consistently lovely, whether it’s
woozy soft-pop, winsome chamber-folk, ambient découpage, or some
variant thereof. “Do What I Do,” a spectral psych-pop canon
awash in acoustic guitar arpeggios, bright glockenspiels, and seraphic
harmonies, perfectly reconciles the Association and the Velvet Underground,
whereas the woodwind-embellished “Walk Real Slow” channels the
wistful elegance of Françoise Hardy. There’s a distinctly
retro quality to much of the CD, as its two covers — a sweetly
deadpan reading of “Suicide Is Painless” and an exquisite take
on the Velvets’ “Stephanie Says” — make abundantly
clear, but more experimental, electronics-based tracks, such as
“Shepard’s Song” and “The Morning After,”
anchor the album in the here and now. Ejigayehu “Gigi” Shibabaw is probably the
most famous Ethiopian vocalist around, but really, now, how many Ethiopian
vocalists can you name off the top of your head? It’s a pity we
Americans are so provincial, because if Gigi is at all representative of
her homeland’s talent pool, we’re missing out on a lot. Gold & Wax, her sixth
album, blends traditional Ethiopian church music into a slurry of Afro-pop,
dub, funk, and house. Abetted by a crack band that features P-Funk
keyboardist Bernie Worrell, iconoclastic guitarist Buckethead, and jazz
trumpeter Nils Petter Molvær, Gigi makes music that’s
propulsive, sexy, and utterly beguiling — and way too good to be
exiled to the worldbeat ghetto. Like Gigi’s other Palm releases, Gold & Wax was
produced by Bill Laswell, who’s worked with everyone from Fela Kuti
to Iggy Pop, from Herbie Hancock to the Talking Heads, from John Zorn to
Dub Syndicate. Laswell, who has a distinctive (some might say heavy-handed)
production style, is no doubt responsible for a good part of the
album’s cosmopolitan sound, but it bears noting that contemporary
Ethiopian music is itself a hodgepodge of influences, incorporating Middle
Eastern modalities and American jazz and R&B. But let more informed
(and more uptight) listeners quarrel over questions of authenticity and
provenance. The rest of us can groove to the simultaneously haunting,
delirious, and seductive “Anten,” with its twitchy beats,
plaintive vocals, and swelling strings; the ululating, Indian-influenced
“Hulu-Dane,” which radiates more heat than a good curry; and
the hypnotic closer “Enoralehu,” in which Gigi’s vocal
acrobatics put the current R&B melisma queens to shame.
This article appears in Jul 6-12, 2006.
