Obi Best Sings Indie-Poptronica Dioramas

Obi Best at Chop Suey, Seattle, February 12, 2009

We rolled into Chop Suey in time for the opening band Obi Best last night, and found the place jam-packed already. You could have knocked us over with a feather. But then we thought about it and it made perfect sense: Obi Best is led by Alex Lilly, who sings backup in the headlining band the Bird and the Bee. Two great tastes that go great together. (Read about how that happened in our sister site LAist's interview.)

Live, Obi Best is Lilly and Bram Inscore (bass, keyboard), Wendy Wang (bass, guitar), and Barbara Gruska (drums). The songs off the first album, Capades, are a motley collection: "Nothing Can Come Between Us" has a Regina Spektor-y, pulsing beat and while it's a heat-seeking art-pop single, it showcases Lilly's consistent concern for vocal phrasing. Hearing them from the back of Chop Suey was fun, but we could tell these were songs that would bear attentive repeat listenings.

Lilly tries to create an "inner world" for each of her songs--her lyrics paint audio dioramas. Live, the feel is stripped down from the layered sound of the album, and the vocal stylings aren't quite as effortless. They closed with "Because of People Like You," which she described as a "big old middle finger to someone who left a nasty note on my car," but which is less an act of musical last-wordism than a chance to transmute a shitty memory into a manifesto: "I will lend them brains to borrow," sang Lilly, making it sound almost compassionate.

Inara George of the Bird and the Bee, Chop Suey, Seattle, February 12, 2009

Somehow it got even more crowded for the Bird and the Bee, Inara George and Greg Kurstin, who may or may not be working on a Hall & Oates cover album, but did provide a cover of "I Can't Go For That" (?)--honestly we can't remember which it was because the single-song encore was the Bee Gees' "How Deep Is Your Love" and the overwhelming joy that inspired in us wiped out earlier memories.

George sings mostly in her upper register, a breathy, retro chanteuse take that sits like icing on top of Kurstin's space-age bachelor pad jazz ("Ray Gun"), which itself comes with an ironic cherry on top: girl-group backup singers dressed, like George, in '60s Day-Glo plastic smocks. ("Is that comfortable at all?" our friend asked Lilly when she made a beeline for the bar during a song break--turns out, no, plastic doesn't keep you warm.) The audience knew the whole album--Ray Guns are Not Just the Future--and George even orchestrated a "ray guns are not just the future" chant-along, telling the crowd that Seattle "wins" and breaking into a wide grin at the roars that went up each time a new song began. "It's so great when you can come to a town where you don't know anyone and there's a big crowd to see you," she said, possibly, as we're paraphrasing.

Now, take few minutes to enjoy "F-cking Boyfriend," which everyone gleefully sang along with: