The Musicgoer: She & Him's Volume One

SHE & HIM
Volume One
(Merge)
*** 1/2 (out of five)
The saucer-eyed gamine Zooey Deschanel has had memorable roles in films ranging from Almost Famous to Elf to All the Real Girls to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy without ever quite becoming a star; she is, however, the fantasy girlfriend of thousands of thirtysomething moviegoers. Now, as if she weren’t adorable enough, she’s gone and recorded a charming album of retro-flavoured pop songs with M. Ward, writing all the songs (save for a pair of covers) and performing them with a strong, capable, agreeably untrained singing voice that straddles ’60s Nashville and ’70s Laurel Canyon.

The songs on Volume One are deliberately old-fashioned, so much so that many of them turn into mere pastiche—there’s even whistling in the chorus to “I Thought I Saw Your Face Today” and a Mills Brothers-style mouth-trumpet solo on “Change Is Hard.” But on the best tracks (like the opener “Sentimental Heart” and the infectious girl-group-influenced “Sweet Darlin’”), Deschanel’s heart-on-sleeve, malt shoppe-jukebox lyrics and her ear for well-crafted melodies make a winning package. It probably helps to picture her singing them, though—and it especially helps if you picture her winking saucily at you as she does so.