Last year, Scarlett Johansson surprised a lot of people when she released her album of Tom Waits songs, not least of all me. I loved the album, Anywhere I Lay My Head – her smoky voice perfectly suited Waits tunes. Produced by Dave Sitek and with backing from Bowie, the album featured some of my most listened to tracks from last year.
Her follow up, released last month, is a collection of original songs written by and recorded with Pete Yorn, called The Break Up Album and this theme runs right through it – misery, anger, loss and disappointment punctuate an album of reasonable tracks.
The opening track is perhaps unfortunately the best track on the album. That’s not to take from the pleasantness of some of the other songs, but none of them reach the perfect sound of Relator.
You can leave whenever you want out
Wear and Tear has Yorn on lead vocals, before Johansson robotically joins in on the bridge. On I Don’t Know What to Do, the singers trade vocals and the album loses momentum. And so flows the album - some pleasant highs with a few mis-steps. Never fantastic, but never terrible either, The Break Up is more than background music, but I can’t see myself playing it on repeat for years to come.
The album was actually recorded back in 2006 over a couple of afternoon sessions and this hasty unprofessionalism does let the album down. Much of Johansson’s vocals should have been re-recorded. Thankfully, Yorn’s own raw folk vocals give The Break Up an emotional integrity that helps you forgive any technical shortcomings in the album and focus on some excellent songs. This isn’t Scarlett Johansson’s album, but nor is it Pete Yorn’s. It’s trying to be a collaboration between musician and singer/songwriter, emulating Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot’s 1960′s albums, but with the exception of Relator, it never hits the right tone. She and Him’s album, with Zooey Deschanel (yes, I realise I’m obsessed) and M. Ward, is far closer in style to what Yorn was seeking, and is a far superior album.
I might have to check out that She And Him album. I’ve been meaning to check out more of M Ward’s stuff since I got the Monsters of Folk album he did stuff for.
Loathe to critisise Scarlett (or indeed Pete as I think he’s great) this sounds like a poor imitation of Zooey’s Him & Her.
@Paul - Him & Her is just lovely. A strange little collaboartion of pop-country and folk-quirky, it’s just lovely. It may push one over the edge of Zooey fanaticism.