Obi Best 'Capades' album

LA's Obi Best is hitting the road to share their fanciful pop with you in person. First they'll be play several west coast dates with their friends The Bird and The Bee, for whom Obi frontwoman Alex Lilly moonlights as a backup singer. Then they'll embark on their own national tour.

The band's forthcoming debut full-length "Capades" is set for a February 24th release. The album is a collection of whimsical indie pop songs with electronic flourishes. Lilly's voice is playful and flirty, complementing her idiosyncratic songwriting and the detailed musical arrangements. Be sure to check it out if you're a fan of Stereolab, Au Revoir Simone, or The Bird and The Bee.

When she’s not moonlighting as back-up singer for acclaimed retro-pop group the Bird and the Bee (Bluenote), Alex Lilly is masterminding the fanciful pop of Obi Best. With the help of a few Los Angeles-based friends and a sensibility that’s as at home with Stereolab as it is with Prokofiev, Lilly conjures music that’s complex and catchy -- think geometry, double-dutch, and animated spin art.

Obi Best’s debut album, Capades, is a rich tapestry of piano, airy electronica, refined rock and panoramic beats deftly punctuated by bells and chirps and otherworldly sounds. Ranging from melodic and ethereal to rollicking and fun, the album inhabits a lush universe where fantasy and reality live side by side; here, Tokyo lies just around the block from Stockholm, youth and wisdom hold hands, magic seems to grow on trees.

Guiding the tour are Lilly‘s clarion vocals, which call to mind Feist, or Karen Carpenter (with more traction). Singing about bygone eras, nasty neighbors, lovers’ covert ancestry, and the inadequacy of language all with disarming frankness, Lilly is both wide-eyed and watchful. It‘s this odd pairing of innocence and worldliness, combined with Lilly’s irreverence and sass as a live performer, that makes Obi Best one of the more intriguing projects to come out of LA’s music scene in recent years.

Obi Best is comprised of synth wizards Bram Inscore (Beck, Peeping Tom, Jem) and John Wood (Inara George, Mike Andrews), drummer Barbara Gruska (Jenny Lewis, Benji Hughes), Alex Lilly on vocals/guitar/keys/g4 and guest back-up vocalists Lisa Tremain (Readers) and Kim Talon (Eagle and Talon). They signed to LA record label Social Science in 2008 and the full-length is due for digital release on February 24th, 2009.

Obi Best tour dates
+ = w/ The Bird and the Bee
01/15: Los Angeles, CA @ Hotel Cafe
01/21: Flagstaff, AZ @ Hotel Monte Vista
01/22: Phoenix, AZ @ Modified Arts
01/23: Tucson, AZ @ Plush
01/24: San Diego, CA @ The Pink Elephant
02/05: San Diego, CA @ The Casbah +
02/07: Santa Barbara, CA @ Soho +
02/09: San Francisco,CA @ The Independent +
02/11: Portland, OR @ Doug Fir +
02/12: Seattle, WA @ Chop Suey +
02/13: Boise, ID @ Neurolux
02/14: Salt Lake City, Utah @ Kilby Court
02/15: Denver, CO @ Larimer Lounge
02/19: Cleveland, OH @ Beachland Ballroom
02/20: Pittsburgh, PA @ Brillobox
02/21: Brooklyn, NY @ Union Pool
02/22: Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brendaís
02/23: Washington, DC @ DC9
02/25: Memphis, TN @ Minglewood Hall
03/13: Los Angeles, CA @ Live on KXLU

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Obi Best - Capades