She & Him

by Eddie Robson

'She' being Zooey Deschanel out of Almost Famous and Hitch-Hiker's...

"Just two months after Scarlett Johansson braved derision by releasing some songs she’d sung, here comes another American indie-flick actress looking to prove she can cut it in another field."

Just two months after Scarlett Johansson braved derision by releasing some songs she’d sung, here comes another American indie-flick actress looking to prove she can cut it in another field. To give her the credit, Zooey Deschanel popped her head over the parapet first – her album, ‘Volume One’, came out in March in America – and it is a risky move for her, given that she has credibility to lose and that the kind of people who like her are probably exactly the sort of people likely to write this sort of thing off as a vanity project.

Deschanel doesn’t seem to be trying too hard to promote her record off the back of her acting fame. Whereas Johansson’s album is under her own name but is clearly a collaborative effort, Deschanel has put hers out under the name She & Him – even though it’s much more of a singer-songwriter project. The ‘Him’ is Portland-scene indie-folk bloke M. Ward (who has worked with Bright Eyes and has a fair bit of credibility of his own to lose), but his role in this is far more understated than Dave Sitek’s in the Johansson album. He plays guitar and produces, but Deschanel is credited as sole author of three-quarters of the songs. She also plays piano, amongst other things, so she is a Proper Musician.

It has to be said that ‘Volume One’ is far less zeitgeisty than Johansson’s ‘Anywhere I Lay My Head’. But there’s nothing wrong with that. What is a little worrying is that, for the first two or three tracks, it all seems just a bit MOR – fine, but forgettable. Deschanel has a pleasant voice with a bit of texture (which doesn’t seem to have been treated), but there’s a serious danger that she could be just another anonymous female singer-songwriter. Which would be a terrible shame.

Fortunately it turns out that the most straightforward, easy-on-the-ear tracks have been shoved up front, and there’s more interesting stuff the further you get into the album. It’s fixated on the early-to-mid 1960s, with the key influences being Patsy Cline, Phil Spector and the early Beatles. ‘Change is Hard’ is a nice melancholy slide-guitar track, ‘I Thought I Saw Your Face’ is a McCartney-esque piano ballad, ‘I Was Made For You’ is a lovely classic girl-group pastiche.

There are two covers – one of an early Beatles song, another of a song covered by The Beatles. Deschanel’s reading of Smoky Robinson’s ‘You Really Got A Hold On Me’ is pretty straight and stripped-down, but her version of ‘I Should Have Known Better’ reworks the song as a woozy calypso. It shows that she does have the ability to be more off-beam than this record largely suggests, and she’d do well to develop that side of herself on the next record (there will apparently be one).

But then there’s a song which sounds like it must be a cover – a ’60s bubblegum pop hit – but it isn’t. It’s called ‘Sweet Darlin’’ and it seems instantly familiar, but it turns out that in fact it’s just really, really good. Deschanel co-wrote it with actor/drummer Jason Schwartzman and they should write together again if there’s a chance that the results will be as good as this. It’s a small classic, in fact. If this is a vanity project, maybe we could all do to be a little more vain.

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