My instinct was to write off Scarlett Johansson's involvement with this album and credit almost everything to Dave Sitek (of TV on the Radio, who produced/engineered/played a bunch of stuff); but that kind of dismissal is plainly sexist. Is it fair to discount Johansson because she is an actress with a pretty face? Despite having been involved in critically acclaimed films like Lost in Translation and The Man Who Wasn't There and hailing from New York, Johansson is still perceived by some as a Hollywood creation; the virtue/damnation of her blondeness and her portrayal of the sellout character in Ghost World set her up as a personification of Hollywood shallowness; maybe someday she'll shock us all like Charlize Theron but until then people still snicker when she turns up the trailers of Woody Allen films as though she doesn't deserve to be there.

Which is mostly bullshit. Johansson is a mostly drama-free actress who has carefully balanced her acting resume with junk that pays the bills and work that probably fulfills an artistic drive. If she is perceived as a cypher that may be due to her desire for privacy. And when did we so significantly segregate the arts? Certainly every time Madonna or Sting try to act it makes entertainment media grin and shrug, but the reception given to Jennifer Hudson, 8 Mile and Alpha Dog show that these doors are opening again; not every cross-arts excursion needs to be viewed in the context of Jennifer Love Hewitt albums or Glitter.

So, credit to Johansson or to Sitek, either way, this album is really good; on the whole I like it more than TV on the Radio's last release, Return to Cookie Mountain, which seemed too long and dense and too short on melody for me to really grab on to (this is admittedly because I have so little time for new music these days). The melodies here come fully vetted from Tom Waits' head so compositionally, there is nothing to worry about. Presentationally, the songs are painted in deeper colors than Waits' arrangements; where Waits is fiery reds and oranges, this album is a langorous green sea. "I Don't Want to Grow Up" aside, they avoid whatever might pass for a hit and dig deeper into the catalogue: the material covers a wide range of years, going back as far as Small Change's "I Wish I Was In New Orleans" up through "Fannin Street" which appeared on Orphans. Two tracks come from Alice and even the overlooked Real Gone's "Green Grass" get an airing. One original track, "Song for Jo", curls up in the center of the album and matches tonally so well that I figured it must be a cover of a song I didn't recognize at first. My favorite element is the music box treatment given to "New Orleans"; I'm not sure if they had a music box built for the music or treated a keyboard or xylophone but it's lovely, mixed atop each note played in reverse.

Fair enough: Johansson's voice is occasionally bland, and it's subjected to a fair amount of reverb that can strip it of affect; Sitek treats the voice as just another instrument and it isn't the only thing he spent time layering and manipulating (there are parts in "Green Grass" where her vocals almost completely vanish behind massive swaths of reverbed guitar and sound effects; and "Who Are You" is basically a duet with Sitek). But you have to wonder if this approach would be given criticism if this were an unknown vocalist from Brooklyn rather than a known celebrity. Paradoxically it seems we may expect nothing from ScarJo and expect too much. As a first release (maybe an only release; maybe done on a whim; maybe completely driven by Sitek and an anomaly in her creative career, who knows), it's something to be proud of.

Labels: reviews, scarlett johansson, tom waits, tv on the radio