Scarlett Johansson: "Anywhere I Lay My Head"

[That Skipping Rope.]

I think I'm the only one looking forward to this release. She's one of my favorite actresses (aka sexy woman) and her voice is really interesting. I'm not a huge Tom Waits fan, but maybe the album will come with some nice foldout posters or something.

Here's her singing "Summertime" -
uk.youtube.com/watch?v=5F_yCFtFn24

[That Skipping Rope.]

"Fawn"
"Town With No Cheer"
"Falling Down"
"Anywhere I Lay My Head"
"Fannin' Street"
"Song for Jo"
"Green Grass"
"I Wish I Was in New Orleans"
"I Don't Want To Grow Up"
"No One Knows I'm Gone"
"Who Are You?"

[whispersandlies]

oh god, for some reason this is bound to just suck. She's a great actor tho and she's very beautiful.

[RedDragon]

I love her. The album features backing vocals from David Bowie and he said that "Scarlett's performances are mystical and twice cool". The producer of the album is David Sitek from TV On The Radio.

[tick / tock]

haveyoueverbeenlow said:

I think I'm the only one looking forward to this release.

Haha, I was reading this as if it was a quote from Scarlett... I was gonna say...

[backintime]

David Bowie has spoken about his work on Scarlett Johansson’s debut album, a collection of covers of Tom Waits songs.

The rock legend added backing vocals to two tracks on 'Anywhere I Lay My Head' - 'Falling Down' and 'Fannin' Street'.

Posting on his official site BowieNet, the singer said: “The songs are great, really good Tom Waits stuff, and Scarlett's performances are mystical and twice cool. She creates a mood that could have been summoned by someone like Margery Latimer or Jeanette Winterson.”

However, the veteran artist played down his contributions to the record, saying: “I've seen the press on this and I suppose the record company wanted to spin my involvement a little more than it actually warrants. All I contribute are these oo's and ah's on a couple of tracks.

“[TV On The Radio’s] David Sitek, the producer, originally asked me to do three songs, but for one of them, ‘I Don't Wanna Grow Up’, I didn't feel I could contribute much to it, so I left it alone.”

It's out May 20, by the way

[That Skipping Rope.]

I will be buying this based on the artwork alone:

www.scarlett-photos.com/thumbnails.php?album=875

[Hallows]

She's beautiful, but she has the same "aloof" facial expression in every picture.

[RedDragon]

It's curious to see that even after all the hype behind her, the latests movies she released "flopped" at the box office.

THE OTHER BOLEYN GIRL: $21,237,000 (Production Budget: $35 million)
THE NANNY DIARIES: $25,930,652
THE BLACK DAHLIA: $22,545,080 (Production Budget: $50 million)

[cactus tree]

Her movies have never done all that well. She's one of those people that the media likes but that the general public doesn't really seem to warm up to. Part of it's her fault because she tends not to do mainstream-ish movies most of the time. She's a definite indie darling.

I can't see the album being any more successful, but it's pretty obviously a vanity project she's doing because she wants to. If they were expecting big sales Scarlett would be recording something else besides covers of Tom Waits.

[RedDragon]

TRACK BY TRACK: Scarlett Johansson: Anywhere I Lay My Head

1. “Fawn”

(Taken from Tom Waits’ 2002 album, Alice)

A bit of a cheat, this, as it’s an instrumental track. But, it does efficiently set out the album’s sonic template – loosely, late period Cocteau Twins, with touches of Mercury Rev’s Deserter’s Songs and Marianne Faithfull. A gentle organ intro before a wave of brass comes crashing in, then straight into…

2. “Town With No Cheer”

(Swordfishtrombones, 1983)

Scarlett privileges the storytelling aspect of Waits’ original, recalling here Marianne Faithfull as she half-sings, half-speaks the lyrics. Waits’ version is pretty sparse – just his voice recounting the lyrics accompanied by keyboard and accordion. Initially, this version doesn’t stray too much from that: the backing is organ, and keyboards with the occasional burst of guitar, but gradually Sitek layers on sax and drums and pushes the organ further up in the mix.

3. “Falling Down”

(Big Time, 1988)

This was the only studio cut on Waits’ ’88 live album. Here, Scarlett sounds very like Liz Frazer, which is effectively the vocal setting she operates in for much of the album. Her voice is perhaps deeper and less sharp than Frazer, but it works convincingly in the musical context, which Sitek describes as a “cough medicine tinker bell vibe.” And, yes, her voice sits surprisingly well with Bowie’s harmonies. There’s sleigh bells and a xylophone, while a haunting guitar motif towards the end recalls Mercury Rev’s “Endlessly”.

4. “Anywhere I Lay My Head”

(Rain Dogs, 1985)

Instead of the opening drunken trumpet reverie of Waits’ original, we get a soft, drum pattern intro and the swish of a keyboard and accordion. Scarlett sings defiantly “I don’t need anybody because I learned to be alone” against a stunning church organ crescendo.

5. “Fannin’ Street”

(Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers And Bastards, 2006)

The drum intro is worryingly reminiscent of “Feed The World”, but let’s accentuate the positive. Scarlett’s take on one of the “blues” tracks from Waits’ triple album is suitably downbeat, again half speaking the lyrics by way of privileging the song’s narrative, Bowie adding rather mournful backing vocals, gently cautioning her against visiting that titular address.

6. “Song For Jo”

The only original composition on the album, written by Johannson and Sitek. “Do you remember how we fell asleep on the bathroom floor/It wasn’t always pretty/On the white tiles…” Scarlett half-sings, half-whispers over soft acoustic guitar loops and soporific drums that reminds of the blurry folk of Sebadoh's Weed Forestin' album. The vibe is woozy, approximately a bottle of Benylin's worth.

7. “Green Grass”

(Real Gone, 2004)

Against the soft whir of cicadas, a loping xylophone melody and occasional bursts of surf-style guitar, this sounds like it should be on the soundtrack to a mid-period David Lynch film.

8. “I Wish I Was In New Orleans”

(Small Change, 1976)

One of the most atmospheric tracks on the album, and the earliest Waits’ song included here. Sitek replicates the piano line of the original on a music box, which provides pretty much the only backing here, aside from layers of swooshing ambient sound. There’s something quite funny, too, about hearing Scarlett announce “I’ll drink you under the table”, in the same breathy, “Happy birthday, Mr President” style as Marilyn Monroe.

9. “I Don’t Want To Grow Up”

(Bone Machine, 1992)

Also covered by the Ramones, on their last album 1995’s Adios Amigos!. With Eighties’ pop keyboards and drum machine patterns (reminiscent, variously, of New Order and Pet Shop Boys), this is most uptempo song in the collection; Bowie was also meant to contribute but declined - he couldn't think, apparently, of anything to add. “How the hell did I get here so soon?” marvels Scarlett, aged 24.

10. “No One Knows I’m Gone”

(Alice, 2002)

This could sit on The Cure’s Disintegration album; it has the lush atmospherics of “Prayers For Rain” or “Same Deep Water As You”. A stately accompaniment of keyboards, Velvets-y guitar, sleigh bells (there’s a lot of sleigh bells on this record) and weirdly distorted drums.

11. “Who Are You?”

(Bone Machine, 1992)

Features drum beats half-inched from Roxy Music’s “Angel Eyes”. There’s something about the sepulchral keyboards here and slow bass riffs at the end that inevitably brings to mind Joy Division. Elegiac, which is always a good way to end a record.


Anywhere I Lay My Head is released by Rhino on May 20

[That Skipping Rope.]

Oh sh*t. That made me really excited for this.

[cactus tree]

LOL @ the continued descriptions of "Scarlett half-singing/half whispering"...a.k.a. she can't sing very well.

[RedDragon]

^ ROFL. Yeah.


The first single is "Falling Down".

[That Skipping Rope.]

Songs are streaming on Imeem.

eyeballkid.blogspot.com/2008/04/streaming-scarlett.html

[That Skipping Rope.]

Her singing voice is so unexpected to me, and I'm a huge fan of her movies. It's not polished at all, and I find it incredibly sexy.

I highly recommend you all give this a chance.

[That Skipping Rope.]

LEAKED!

[RedDragon]

The album is boring. The production is really good though but

Apr 25, 2008 15:06:19 GMT -5 backintime said:

Her voice is horrible.

[That Skipping Rope.]

I think the album's incredible. She obviously is not a stellar vocalist, but I didn't expect her to be. Her voice works well with the atmospheric sound. The production is amazing, as well.

[backintime]

Pitchfork gave the album 5.5 out of 10.

The very idea of Scarlett Johansson's debut album has been met with a strange collective kneejerk dismissal, not so much because she's an actor making a foray into music, but she's a good actor making a foray into music. The Bijou Phillipses and David Hasselhoffs of the world, the Lindsay Lohans and Don Johnsons, have trained us to think the worst of dabblers and dilettantes. But Scarlett comes from an already storied cinema career-- Ghost World, Lost in Translation, and Match Point among the highlights-- so we assume she has better taste than to do something as gauchely commercial as make an album. Moreover, the concept behind the album-- a collection of Tom Waits covers-- might have bought her some sympathy and at least a little curiosity, but instead it seems almost comically ambitious, an endeavor that even most non-actress musicians couldn't pull off (see: Holly Cole). What could the star of The Island ever tell us about Waits that we didn't already know? Waits himself never got so much grief for appearing in studio bombs like Mystery Men or The Two Jakes.

Johansson's affection for Waits' music, however, is unmistakable. Instead of obvious picks, Anywhere I Lay My Head reveals an artist with more than a passing familiarity with his work. These songs-- culled from later Waits albums like 1992's Bone Machine and 2002's Alice, with only one track from the 1970s-- sound like personal favorites, and to respectfully reinterpret them, she and producer David Sitek corralled a backing band that includes the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Nick Zinner and members of TV on the Radio, Tall Firs, and Celebration. Sitek proves as strong a presence as Johansson herself, swaddling her voice in a soft, otherworldly drone of bells, saxophones, ambient guitars, and burbling beats that suggest a Brooklyn update on vintage 4AD bands like This Mortal Coil or Cocteau Twins (without Elizabeth Fraser's vocal acrobatics, of course). As the album proceeds, this sound, which Sitek has described as a "Tinkerbell on cough syrup," becomes a bit repetitive, the same tricks over and over. The drunken music box and ambient telephone rings on "I Wish I Was in New Orleans" sound overly precious, and "I Don't Wanna Grow Up" never gels in this setting, which may have more to do with song choice than production or performance.

Sitek guides Anywhere I Lay My Head as much as Waits does. In fact, much of the album sounds like the producer might have devised this particular aesthetic as a softer, feminine counterpart to his day-job band's more aggressive, abstract attack. Music boxes replace jagged guitars, warm reed instruments displace lunar howls. Of course, Johansson doesn't take such liberties with lyrics, leaving many of the masculine pronouns unchanged. Still it's startling-- and not unpleasantly so-- to hear a guarded female voice sing words and melodies most commonly associated with Waits' gruff vocals. With all this gender realignment, David Bowie's cameos seem almost inevitable.

So, how does Johansson herself sound? More expressive and less tentative than she did on "Summertime", her track from the 2006 Music Matters comp Unexpected Dreams: Songs From the Stars. While her voice is limited and her pitch occasionally shaky, she has a wide textural range, spanning from low, smooth, and melancholy on "Song for Jo" (the only original, which she co-wrote with Sitek) to bristling and edgy on "Falling Down", whose melody best suits her voice and Sitek's production. However, she sounds blankly inexpressive on "No One Knows I'm Gone", overwhelmed by her back-up singers on closer "Who Are You" and unable to sell Waits' lyrics on "Town with No Cheer"-- a major shortcoming for an actor. Likewise, singing about street musicians and red-beans-and-rice on "I Wish I Was in New Orleans", she's out of her depth.

On several songs, Johansson gets lost in Sitek's swelling production, which may suggest a weak interpreter or a dearth of vocal personality but adds to the album's pervading dreaminess. Ultimately, her ambitions prove more musical than professional, and her willingness to make herself a secondary player here-- behind Waits, Sitek, and TV on the Radio-- makes the whole enterprise seem like a lark, an anti-vanity project. There are no tacky pronouncements of stars-are-just-like-you realness here, no statements about herself or her celebrity or really anything at all. The only thing we've learned about her is that she really, really likes Tom Waits. That's more than enough to avoid catastrophe, but not quite enough to make Anywhere I Lay My Head much more than a curio.

-Stephen M. Deusner, May 19, 2008

[That Skipping Rope.]

Yeah, if this wasn't by Scarlett Johansson, it would be getting better reviews. She doesn't have the Hillary Duff or Lindsay Lohan actress turned "singer" sound that people are expecting her to have.

I still think this is incredible. "Song for Jo" shows how good she could get as a singer-songwriter.

[That Skipping Rope.]

Kate Nash and Lily Allen both recently wrote blogs praising this album.

[RedDragon]

Scarlett Johansson wants to write original material for new album

Scarlett Johansson has said she plans to write an album of original songs for the follow-up to her 2008 debut album 'Anywhere I Lay My Head'.

All but one of the tracks on the actress' first record were covers of Tom Waits' songs. Speaking to MTV News, Johansson confirmed that she would "love" to record another album, this time of original compositions.

"I don't think I'd do covers, so it'd be a project that I have to dedicate myself to," she said. "I feel like that's something for the future."

'Anywhere I Lay My Head' was voted at Number 23 in NME's Top 50 Album's Of 2008. Johansson recorded the album with TV On The Radio's Dave Sitek.

When asked who she would chose if she was forced to do another album of covers, Johansson said: "If I had to, Leonard Cohen, maybe."

NME

[That Skipping Rope.]

Good. "Song For Jo" is the best song off the album anyway.