he Bird and Bee are a jazzy pop duo, and their self-titled album has a very misleading “Parental Advisory: Explicit Content” logo on it. This is probably because of the song “F*cking Boyfriend”, which is essentially a jazzy pop song, except that the chorus contains a shockingly casual and seemingly pointless use of profanity. Even in the liner lyrics the word is written “f*cking”. What I can’t figure out is why anyone would want to limit their audience, even by the minuscule amount that the parental advisory might, when they don’t even want to write the word in full. And once you have the parental advisory, why not just run with it and fill every song with cursing?
That might have helped, because The Bird and the Bee work in a kind of pedestrian jazz-pop reminiscent of Ladytron, but without much edge. The best songs are ones like “I Hate Camera” and “I’m a Broken Heart”, where the music actually feels like it has some substance. Even then, it’s all so gentle and breezy that the album feels like falling asleep in a warm bath. In sugar. In an elevator.