John Evanstan reviews Free & Easy

The Southern California duo of Ryan Lum and Anji Bee bring to mind the cool, sensual jazz of Sade on their nine-track independent CD Free and Easy. They named their record label “Chillcuts” and that’s a perfect definition of their downbeat, sultry late-night sound.

Lum plays a sedate electric guitar and gently jazzy Rhodes piano to back up Bee as she croons and seduces at the microphone. It’s a deliciously soothing combination.

Lovespirals began as an outgrowth of Lum’s former band incarnation, Love Spirals Downwards, which sold more than 50,000 copies of four albums on Projekt Records in the mid-’90s. In 1999, Lum began working with a new lead vocalist in Bee, and changed the band name to Lovespirals to reflect the new sound and direction. The result is a duo that knows how to craft seductive vocal loungey jazz with cooly shifting electronic rhythms.

Ned Raggett reviews “Free & Easy”

Windblown Kiss was a lovely way for Lovespirals to make a clear move away from the days of Love Spirals Downwards, but Free & Easy is the best evidence that the duo of Ryan Lum and Anji Bee is now distinctly its own creative team. With Lum’s guitar playing and arranging now focused on, indeed, free and easy jazz/lounge grooves, Lovespirals here are much more in the creative vein of an act like the Thievery Corporation instead of the Cocteau Twins, say, without specifically cloning either group’s sound. Bee’s singing is a perfect counterpoint, a blend of classic mid-century jazz- pop flow and a bit of ’60s cool in a French or Brazilian sense — some low-key scatting here, some warm, playful crooning there. The gently hip-shaking title track kicks things off and sets the mood all at once, and from there Lovespirals work through a total of nine songs, all of a piece but each with its own gentle joys. Lum’s interest in DJing and techno can readily be heard throughout, more overtly on songs like “Deep in My Soul,” which quickly builds into a politely propulsive dancefloor filler, and “Just Trouble” but in subtler ways as well, as listens to “Hand in Hand” confirm. But the overall tone of the album is best captured with songs like “Walk Away,” a slow and lovely late-night mood-out with some great keyboard work from Lum to go with his guitar, and “Abide,” with its sassy but gentle strut. Concluding song “Sandcastles” might actually be the strongest of the bunch, easygoing and danceable all at once, concluding with a lovely overdubbed a cappella chorus from Bee.