A few months ago, actress Scarlett Johannson did the impossible. She linked up with TV On The Radio's Dave Sirtek, roped in David Bowie and recorded an album of Tom Waits song. The impossible part was that she made it sound very, very boring.
Luckily, fellow Hollywood star Zooey Deschanel has taken a more successful route. Freed of the crippling need to appear hip that seemingly sunk Johannson's effort, Deschanel has simply recorded her own starkly lovely folk-pop nuggets, collaborated with respected indie-folk singer-songwriter M Ward and released a low-key album entitled Volume 1.
The results are rather delightful - This Is Not A Test skips along nicely, with acoustic guitar, harmonies and even the sound of M Ward doing a vocal impersonation of a trumpet, and a chorus that you'll be whistling for weeks. It's not particularly cutting-edge, and any wannabe hipsters will probably turn up their nose at it. Which, let's face it, is no bad thing.<;p>
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