“Village Voice” Article with Zooey and Scarlett Johansson Album Comparison

Posted on May 12, 2008

Village Voice has an article mentioning Volume One in comparison with actress Scarlett Johansson’s debut album Anywhere I Lay My Head:

Anywhere I Lay My Head is inevitably going to draw comparisons to She & Him’s Volume One, another vanity-project album from a gorgeous indie-film actress. But even if Zooey Deschanel is both a more distinctive and a more technically gifted singer than Johansson, even if her “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” from Elf completely destroys Johansson’s “Brass in the Pocket” from Lost in Translation, Volume One strikes me as a much safer, less interesting record. Rather than a weirdo visionary like Sitek, Deschanel made her album alongside the amiable middlebrow indie-folk-popper M. Ward. I like Volume One just fine, but it’s a low-risk, low-reward affair, and it never strives for anything beyond a breezy utilitarian pleasantness. For all its pure goofiness, Anywhere I Lay My Head is a braver and heavier work, a slow dive into honeyed ether. It’s not a masterpiece, but it unfolds like a long, luxuriant, theatrical sigh, and I’ll take that.

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