\u201cThere was a scene where I die,\u201d George adds, \u201cand then I get reanimated by a ghost and someone pays \u2014 I don\u2019t know if you need to put this in the article \u2014 someone pays to have relations with me.\u201d She sighs.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was just such a rich time.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1774035789_230_hqdefault.jpg\")
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Three decades later, George\u2019s warm feelings for that era \u2014 and especially for the duo who soundtracked it \u2014 have led to an exquisite new album, \u201cSongs of Douglass & Littell,\u201d on which she sets aside her own songwriting to interpret nine tunes by these under-the-radar veterans of West Coast musical theater: searching, funny, vividly emotional songs like \u201cTired Butterfly,\u201d about a busy insect in search of \u201ca little nap,\u201d and \u201cThe Extra Nipple,\u201d which ponders a \u201charsh encounter with another heart.\u201d<\/p>\n
Think of the record as George\u2019s take on one of Ella Fitzgerald\u2019s classic \u201cSong Book\u201d LPs from the late \u201950s and early \u201960s, when the jazz star was systematically enshrining the work of Cole Porter, Irving Berlin and other authors of the Great American Songbook.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese men deserve to have some attention,\u201d George says of Douglass and Littell, the latter of whom she\u2019s known since she was a little girl performing in plays at Topanga Canyon\u2019s Theatricum Botanicum. \u201cI want to give them their flowers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet if the album is rooted in the creative awakenings of George\u2019s youth, it\u2019s also the 51-year-old\u2019s way of embracing middle age.<\/p>\n
Inspired by singers like Helen Merrill and Chet Baker \u2014 \u201cElis & Tom,\u201d a 1974 duo album by Brazil\u2019s Elis Regina and Ant\u00f4nio Carlos Jobim, was another touchstone \u2014 George turns on \u201cSongs\u201d from the Bird and the Bee\u2019s blippy electronica and the folky pop of her solo work to a jazzier sound that puts her cool, breathy vocals amid piano, strings and horns.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a grown-up record,\u201d says George, who shares three teenage children with her husband, the movie director Jake Kasdan. \u201cI don\u2019t want to be making music that makes me feel like I\u2019m trying to be younger \u2014 I wanted to make something that makes me feel my age.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Inara](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1774035790_894_.jpeg\")
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Inara George at home this month.<\/p>\n
(Christina House \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
The singer is at home near Griffith Park on a recent afternoon; with her kids at school and Kasdan away on a film shoot, the house is quiet, though signs of music are everywhere: a drum set, a grand piano, a guitar once owned by George\u2019s late father, Lowell George, who founded the cult-fave L.A. rock band Little Feat and who died of a heart attack when Inara was only 4.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a woman, it\u2019s a weird time in life \u2014 there\u2019s something in-between about it,\u201d she says. \u201cEven the question of what do you wear. When you\u2019re younger, you\u2019re like, I\u2019m gonna wear a dress \u2014 is it sexy, is it cute? Now, all of a sudden, all I want to do is wear suits.\u201d She laughs.<\/p>\n
Douglass, who plays piano on the new album, hears a \u201cgroundedness\u201d in George\u2019s singing all the more remarkable given that the arrangements represent \u201ca new kind of school for her,\u201d he says. \u201cI was wondering how she would approach it, and she\u2019s done it with such aplomb and wisdom.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Friday night, Douglass will accompany George \u2014 along with more than a dozen other players \u2014 in a record-release concert at Largo at the Coronet, with proceeds going to the nonprofit LA Voice, which seeks to organize voters on issues related to immigration and affordable housing.<\/p>\n
George happily describes \u201cSongs of Douglass & Littell\u201d as a passion project. \u201cI think you get to a certain point where selling a million records is not your intention,\u201d she says. \u201cObviously, I wouldn\u2019t make a record like this if I had that intention.\u201d (Counterpoint: the arena-filling success of Laufey<\/a>.)<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m just about the experience,\u201d she adds, \u201cand this has been an amazing experience.\u201d<\/p>\n The experience began one night a few years ago when George hosted a wine-soaked reunion of performers who\u2019d worked with Douglass and Littell back in the \u201990s on shows like \u201cThe Wandering Whore\u201d and \u201cNo Miracle: A Consolation<\/a>,\u201d the latter a song cycle rooted in the losses of the AIDS epidemic.<\/p>\n Philip Littell, from left, Eliot Douglass and Inara George.<\/p>\n (Thomas Heegard)<\/p>\n![\"Philip](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1774035790_636_.jpeg\")
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