Wanna listen to Scarlett Johansson’s Anywhere I Lay My Head in its entirety right ? The entire album of her Tom Waits covers is streaming on Imeem as we speak a week early (the album doesn’t come out proper until 5.20). You can hear it below, but you’ll need to be logged into Imeem or you’ll only get :30 second samples, but that might be all you need. We’re not the hugest fans of the album, or rather, the TV On The Radio-sounding production by TVOTR guitarist Dave Sitek is fine and predictable enough, but Johansson’s baritone is kind of flat and lifeless. When she sings in a high falsetto (like she does David Lynch-like lullaby on the track “I Wish I Was In New Orleans”) we’re kind of over the moon though. But that’s one track.
David Bowie guests on the record and Salman Rushdie gropes her in the video, but otherwise, we find this album kinda lackluster, but decide yourself, we suppose.
Somehow, Tom Waits was cool with all of it. “I never would have done it if Tom didn’t give his OK,” Johannson told Pitchfork. “I made sure that he heard some of the rough, horrible mixes. [laughs] He even OKed it with how terribly boring and dull it was [at that point]. But he did. I think he was probably interested himself to hear what could happen.” Maybe, morbid curiosity?
