Friday 28 August 2009

Scarlett Johansson and Pete Yorn - Relator

To say that the 2008 album Anywhere I Lay My Head by actress Scarlett Johansson received a mixed reaction is probably something of an understatement. Some critics panned it, others loved it. It really was a marmite album. We liked it a lot. In fact it was one of our top ten albums of last year, catch our review here.

However, before Johansson released Anywhere I Lay My Head she had recorded another collection of songs back in 2006 with Pete Yorn, and this collection is now finally to see the light of day when the album Break Up is released in September. The album was inspired by Serge Gainsbourg’s 1960s recordings with Brigitte Bardot, a concept that came to Yorn in a dream.

The debut single from the album is Relator and it is far removed from the material on Anywhere I Lay My Head. It’s a short skippy snappy tune, almost cute and summery in its vibe. We certainly can’t hear any of the smouldering sexual erotic tension that existed on the best of the Gainsbourg and Bardot tracks, this is far lighter stuff. However the voices do compliment each other, Johansson producing a vocal sounding like a dulled southern gal Winehouse with Yorn providing a light poppy tone balancing the track well. It's a song that is less likely to receive so much love or hate as her previous releases and at the risk of sounding lazy, the best word we can use to describe the song is, well, just nice.

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