-
-
Ad Space
(728 x 90)
Published on 9/4/08
Survey
Sign up today!
If you hit the brakes on this page, odds are it was for the pretty face, not the Music banner. While we pride ourselves on spotlighting under-the-radar should-be stars, nothing stops page-flipping dead in its tracks like Zooey Deschanel’s doe eyes or Scarlett Johansson’s plump lips. Deschanel cut an album in tune with her on-screen charm, but when Rhino Records announced a deal with Johansson for an album of Tom Waits covers, it was the WTF heard ’round the world.
The 23-year-old actor’s public musical experience consisted of backing the Jesus and Mary Chain at Coachella ’07, singing karaoke to the Pretenders in Lost in Translation and being BFF with a hipster who discovers the blues in Ghost World—far more training than Heidi Montag’s had, but not exactly Juilliard. Regardless, Anywhere I Lay My Head has drawn fellow TOC staffers to the music desk like raccoons to tinfoil. Scarlett’s ballsy art project became the hot topic in water-cooler conversation. It’s no wonder record labels in their dark days turn to celebutantes: That’s buzz a thousand blogs can’t muster. Naturally, the curiosity came in a husk of skepticism. This record couldn’t actually be good, right? With a twinge of shame we admit, well, yes, it is.
A cabal of critical darlings handles most of the music backdrop. Dave Sitek of TV on the Radio, recently ranked No. 1 on NME’s list of pop’s Future 50, produced the record and wrangled guitarist Nick Zinner of Yeah Yeah Yeahs and, holy stardust, David Bowie. Not to mention, there are few stronger songwriting foundations than Tom Waits. A warbling, intoxicated organ opens the album, building into a funereal dirge and finally exploding into fireworks of timpani and brass. To state her intent, Scarlett does nothing: This is no vanity party.
When her voice finally cuts in on track two, it’s startling. Like Nico, Johansson swallows her baritone, which disappears down her gullet in gasps or sinks into the woozy sonic waves. The album is drunk on a cocktail of downer Beach Boys ballads and the gothic gauze of early-’80s cloudgazer acts like Siouxsie Sioux and the Cocteau Twins, and plinks like a broken-pronged music box. Impressively, it shines new light on obscure Tom Waits numbers. Even Scar Jo’s self-penned song, “Song for Jo,” recalling Beck’s Sea Change and Cat Power, blends right in.
Oddly, in having a greater hand in crafting her music, Zooey Deschanel comes off hokey and less sincere. Veiling her celebrity behind pronouns, She & Him pairs the Sundance darling, last heard crooning “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” in Elf, with neofolk savant M. Ward. Her clean, piercing singing one-ups Johansson’s throat, but the affected aw-shucks twang smacks of performance: The country-girl curtseying and slide guitar conjure Reese Witherspoon’s turn as June Carter Cash. There are cute detours into girl-group doo-wop and some kazoos and whistles—it’s warm and pretty, yet as easy to come by as a sunset.
Under any other (nonfamous) name, these records are critical manna. Music snobs adore Sitek and M. Ward. The obstacle with celebrity albums is that Americans adulate and rubberneck for celebrities but primarily relish their humanizing failures. If Deschanel fares better in the reviews, chalk it up to the lower Hollywood rung on which she resides. It’s not that both succeed because they approach their albums as film projects, with characters, directors and professional writers—after all, any pop album can be described as such. We expected the sonic equivalent of flashing their privates to the paparazzi, but the two starlets picked great scripts and steering visionaries. It suits them far better than the unitards in The Island and Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. So why feel shame for digging this? Waits and Bowie act. Get used to it. Gossip Girl’s Leighton Meester is in the studio.
Anywhere I Lay My Head and She & Him’s Volume 1 are in stores now.
