I haven’t done a new music review in a while.  The sad truth is I haven’t been listening to that much music.  I haven’t been listening to much besides the voices in my head.

But a few weeks ago, I came across She & Him.  The Him is M. Ward, one of my favorite mod-folk songwriters.  The she is Zooey Deschanel, the actress and singer that acted and sung on Elf.  I loved her voice when I heard it on Elf, and wished she had an album.  So now she does.

Zooey’s performance on She & Him Volume 1 retains all of it’s character.  The ability to make something look (or sound) effortless is alwas a sign of great talent.  Zooey pulls this off beter than anyone.  At times her voice can sound raw and untrained, but not in a bad way. In a very genuine way.  The songwriting is classic M. Ward throughout the album (with the exception of a couple well chosen covers) and they compliment each other very well.

I do find a couple of faults.  While I like M. Ward’s voice on his solo work, I didn’t like his vocal contributions on this album.  The contrast of their voices was startling, and not in a good way.  If they were to switch rolls and have Zooey sing backup to an M. Ward lead, that might work, but the other way around doesn’t.

Beyond that my only complaints were that a few of the songs weren’t in Zooey’s ideal range.  She pulls off the higher notes just fine, but you lose out on the richness of her lower range.  The prolific use of a lap steal guitar is great, but gets tiresome over the course of this whole album.

Overall, I think it is worth some money, but maybe you pick and choose your favorites rather than getting the whole album.  I can’t wait to see a second effort by these two- (Is there a Volume II in the works?) I have a feeling it would be even better than the first.

Here is a little video: