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Bon Jovi, the Breeders and Sonny Rollins will never walk into a bar together
Published on 6/30/08
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It’s no surprise that the first note on Volume One, the debut album from She & Him, is shared by Zooey Deschanel’s voice and a piano—the whole album is a celebration of harmony. The musical kind, for sure: The actor and her bandmate, indie-rock star M. Ward (known to friends as Matt), have turned out a disarming set of simple pop songs drawn from a variety of ’60s and ’70s styles, a perfectly charming record for the onset of spring. But given their hectic calendars—we couldn’t even get the two of them on the phone at the same time—it must have required some serious harmonizing of schedules to arrange studio sessions together. “I’m so busy that it’s kind of difficult just to have dinner with my friends,” says Deschanel on her cell while walking to her San Francisco hotel, where She & Him was preparing to close the Noise Pop festival earlier this month. She’s not lying. Deschanel has at least two films due this year (M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening in June, and Yes Man, a Peyton Reed–directed comedy, in December), with a couple more in preproduction. “But for some reason,” she continues, “a window of time opened up and I didn’t want to miss it—I didn’t want us to lose momentum.”
The energy she’s referring to came out of the duo’s first collaboration. That was a cover of Richard and Linda Thompson’s “When I Get to the Border,” for The Go-Getter—a film you might not see anytime soon (though it screened at Sundance last year, it has yet to be picked up). Until that film’s director, Martin Hynes, brought them together, Ward knew of Deschanel’s other talent the same way everyone else did. “The first time I heard her sing was in that movie Elf,” he says from his home in Portland, Oregon, a day before joining Deschanel in San Francisco. “When you hear a voice like hers, it just stays with you.” (It could be argued that Deschanel’s singing is the only reason to watch Elf, but that’s another story.)
The actor, on the other hand, had been an M. Ward fan for a while, and after the two struck up a good rapport in the studio, she confided that she’d been sitting on a batch of her own songs. “I didn’t really know how to go about any of it,” she explains. “But we had gotten along so well, and we stayed in contact. Matt even asked me to open for him at one point. He was like, ‘Oh, and send me those songs you’ve got.’ When he said we should record them, I felt like it was a special opportunity.”
If She & Him seems like a Hollywood star on some dilettante’s holiday, think again (or just give Volume One a listen). Deschanel, who plays piano and ukulele, has been writing songs since she was a kid, and had a cabaret act, If All the Stars Were Pretty Babies, that gigged occasionally around L.A. earlier this decade. The songs on Volume One—from heartbreaking torchy numbers (“Take It Back,” “I Thought I Saw Your Face Today”) to sweet and bouncy pop tunes (“I Was Made for You,” “Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?”)—glow with the regular-girl charm that Deschanel brings to her movie roles. “Being able to do films has definitely informed my singing and songwriting,” she says. “It all comes down to different ways to tell a story.”
For Ward, who’s planning his own next album for late this year or early 2009, having to work within the limitations presented by Deschanel’s schedule (or for that matter, his indie label Merge’s budget) just speaks to his aesthetic. “I see music as a laboratory,” he says. “If you can’t get a 70-piece Wall of Sound orchestra, you make do with what you have.” When I ask if it’s him playing kazoo on the album’s best song, the should-be dance hit “This Is Not a Test,” he corrects me: “That’s just Zooey getting a funny sound out of a trumpet.”
She & Him’s Noise Pop show was the duo’s first with a full band, and there’ll be another this week at SXSW in Austin. As for when Deschanel will abandon her obviously failing acting career to tour the country in a smelly van, she dodges the question like a pro—with a fit of laughter. Anyway, the real tease is in the album title. “Yeah, I have a lot of songs,” she says slowly, as if counting them in her head. “I like performing, but recording is really fun—I’m excited to get back into the studio.”
She & Him’s Volume One is out this week on Merge.
HEAR IT NOW! For an early listen to Volume One, head to Boxcar Lounge (168 Ave B between 10th and 11th Sts) anytime between Wed 12 and Mar 20. We hooked up their jukebox, and they’ve got a garden—perfect for spring!
