Everything Goes to Hell
Scarlett Johansson buries Tom Waits
By Chris Morris
I don’t like writing negative reviews. There are still more than enough good and interesting records to keep me occupied. But sometimes an album is so overwhelmingly bad that it represents an immediate threat to the public health and safety. Scarlett Johansson’s Anywhere I Lay My Head is such an album.
As some of you already know, the busty film starlet’s debut foray into music is, save for one original “song,” a recital of material by Tom Waits (and his co-author, wife Kathleen Brennan). We knew this was a bad idea to begin with, right? What a notion: The oeuvre of one of our most eccentric and highly stylized writers, essayed by a 23-year-old actress whose musical know-how doesn’t extend beyond her stint in the karaoke bar in Lost in Translation.
The record lives up to the terrified expectations. Where to begin? Consider this: The songs of Waits, that most urban of American writers, were recorded in the middle of nowhere in Maurice, Louisiana, which would account for the silly wood-nymphet poses Johansson strikes in the album art. Produced by David Andrew Sitek of the momentarily au courant group TV on the Radio, and featuring his band mates Jaleel Bunton and Tunde Adebimpe and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ guitarist Nick Zinner, the set sounds as mossy as the locale. In Sitek’s hands, the junkyard clatter of Waits’s records has been incongruously transposed into a dank deep-pile approximation of This Mortal Coil’s lush 4AD cover collections. Listening to it, your feet stick to the floor.
Anywhere I Lay My Head begins with a portentous instrumental version of Waits’s “Fawn,” as if the band is afraid to let Johansson onstage. Maybe they were. When she finally arrives for a cluttered rendition of “Town With No Cheer,” it is immediately obvious that we are in the presence of a true non-singer.
Waits’s voice sounds like a rusty sled falling down a disused incinerator; Johansson’s voice, which is low, mannish, and affectless, will conjure memories of Nico after an especially bad dope burn. She could not carry a tune if she had an 18-wheeler to transport it: Her range is maybe half an octave, and she betrays no ability to remain on key or on pitch for an entire song’s duration. Worse, she appears to have no idea what these tunes of vagabondage and hard-won experience are all about. She strains to find meaning in a lyric like a fourth-grader fumbling through “This Land Is Your Land” in music class. Tom Waits is a graduate of the School of Hard Knocks; Scarlett Johansson matriculated at the Encino College of Beauty.
It’s difficult to say which songs here are the worst, but I have some nominees. David Bowie, certifying the fact that his career has seen far better days, weighs in with background singing on a blank, pointlessly ornamented version of “Fannin Street.” On “I Wish I Was in New Orleans,” solo music box accompaniment (precious enough for ya?) accentuates every dying, uncertain note in Johansson’s vocal. The great atrocity may be a discofied take on “I Don’t Want to Grow Up”: The liner notes claim it was inspired by Johansson’s love of New Order, but it sounds like a tuneless swipe at “Heart of Glass.”
Really, there’s no reason for anyone, be they Tom Waits fan (beware!) or curious moviegoer, to purchase this album. I get paid to hear this shit; it’s my job. You shouldn’t bother. My great regret is that I’ll never get back the hours I fruitlessly spent trying to find any virtue whatsoever in Anywhere I Lay My Head.
I have Tom Waits’s home phone number, but I resisted the urge to call and ask him what he thought of this album. I hate to hear a grown man cry. As for Johansson’s future in music: Scarlett, your call time on the set is 5 a.m.
Chris Morris hosts Watusi Rodeo every Sunday at 9 a.m. on Indie 103.1.
Published: 05/21/2008
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