Music Review: She and Him

Zooey Deschanel has an admirable work ethic. After all, it must be difficult to be a television and movie star, the “Princess of All That Is Vintage and Twee” and a singing sensation, all at the same time––and to do it all consistently well too. After three albums of original content and one Christmas album, She and Him, Deschanel's collaborative duo with M. Ward, releases its fifth album, Classics, this week. A record consisting of covers of seminal songs from the 1930s and beyond, Classics is an intermittently pleasant listen, though it does not reinvent the wheel.

Conceptually, it is easy to see what drew Deschanel and Ward to the project. She and Him has always dabbled in AM Gold-type music, which has proven to be an ideal fit for Ward’s excellent guitar playing and Deschanel’s lovely voice. Classics also feeds Deschanel’s old soul: vintage has been her bread and butter for years now, and her public persona is inextricably tied to the idea of her as a screwball romantic straight from the 1940s. On these terms, the album succeeds. She and Him effectively makes most of the album’s songs distinct, which is a common pitfall for any cover, even more so from the Classic American Songbook. Deschanel’s voice has never been more powerful on her cover of Aretha Franklin’s “This Girl’s In Love With You,” and Ward’s jangling guitar arrangement updates the song effectively for the folk crowd. Maxine Brown’s “Oh No, Not My Baby” also gets a delightful revamp, with Deschanel effectively settling into her best musical mode—innocent suffering—to make the song her own. The song choices on Classics are largely impeccable, and the album never sounds repetitive.

That being said, She and Him do not always put a good stamp on their songs. The decision to turn the already slow “Unchained Melody” into a funeral dirge is baffling, as is an intriguingly spare yet ultimately colorless cover of “Time After Time.” The slowing of the tempo for some of these songs ruins the pep and personality that made them hits in the first place. The record itself often feels more like a museum curio than an artistic piece; a tribute to bygone eras rather than a step into modernity. Nowhere is this more evident than an entirely unnecessary cover of Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong’s “Would You Like to Take a Walk,” which removes all of the jaunty jazziness from the original in favor of generic strumming. It is a stunningly poor choice that leads to a very anodyne two minutes. All in all, Classics’ modest ambitions and scope lead to modest returns.