She & Him - Volume One
Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008
Becasue it cant be put any better than Allmusic.com’s Tim Sendra put it, “She is actress Zooey Deschanel (Almost Famous, Elf, her sister is on Bones), Him is alt-singer/songwriter M. Ward.” Thats the only thing im going to quote from another review. Let me start by saying that it would be unfair to judge this record as an album by simply an Actress. the record is too good for her not to have earned her stripes as a musician and a singer. Also this record was released on Merge and the last time i checked the label home of Bob Pollard, Neutral Milk Hotel, the Arcade Fire and Spoon wasnt in the business of releasing vanity projects for actresses who think they can sing. Zooey can sing and she writes a mean ’70s sunshine pop and country tune.
People have been comparing her voice to everyone from Dusty Springfield to Linda Thompson but her voice doesnt sound like a lot of other voices you may have heard. she frequently fails to hit notes and the tone and timbre of her voice switches sometimes so drastically in the same song you might be fooled into thinking, as I was, that someone else is singing. You would be wrong. As i was. her voice is slightly alien but honestly this album would not work in anyway if she was a better singer. 90% of this records appeal is in her voice. The other 10% is the songs which the album credits entirely to her except for two covers and one collaboration with Jason Schwartzmann (Rushmore and Phantom Planet), which leads me to believe that M Ward’s participation was limited to backing vocals on two songs and production. There is a haunting echo to almost every tune which is also how M Ward records sound. Weird.
The covers, You Really Got a Hold on Me and the Beatles’ I Should Have Known Better, are not great, the album would have been better off without them but, while this may not be the greatest record ever or even one of the best of the year, it is a surprisingly solid affair by an artist whose opportunities to make another record hopefully rest in her abilities as a singer and a song-writer and not on her name.
