It opens without lyrics—without any vocals at all, in fact—let alone the A-list kind.
The already-maligned-prior-to-a-single-note-leaking, actress-turned-vocalist’s late-May debut is wordlessly making—or at least attempting—some kind of statement. Through the full duration of the bombastic, organ-led, two-and-a-half minute opening track, “Fawn,” Scarlett Johansson is noticeably (though not devastatingly) absent from the start of her debut LP, Anywhere I Lay My Head, a cover album of revered oddball Tom Waits’ junkyard songomalies.
That stands in sharp contrast to the lead cut from, and general approach of, Takes, a just-released 12-track, PJ-Harvey-to-Pinback covers album assembled by subdued British folkie Adem. Since Johansson and Waits are plotted at markedly different quadrants on the fame/credibility matrix, her decision to take on ol’ Tom immediately shrouded the album in a fog of skepticism. Conversely, the largely unknown Adem (who?), better known as the bass player in noise-rockers Fridge (who?) leads Takes with a rendering of “Bedside Table” (what?), a song by the defunct ’90s Texan band Bedhead (again, who?). Expectations for Adem, therefore, are lower than Waits’ trademark Winstons-and-Wild-Turkey grumble.
It’s not so difficult to figure this one out: Adem wins. Cover songs, and to an exponentially greater degree, cover albums, are weighed down chiefly by issues of familiarity. Johansson is preposterously encumbered: half simply by her movie-star-in-the-studio turn and in equal measure by the charmingly shambolic, broken-axeled heap that is Waits’ cult-a-logue (selected both for it’s solidity and, perhaps, as a fast-and-easy cred grab). Adem’s “Bedside Table” rendering, alternately, is valuably weightless; he prettily strums an acoustic and tells the listener of their own domestically violent experience: “You cut your head on the bedside table,” the ugliness of a briefly described event brightly contrasted by gentle harmony.
That gash in my head, however, doesn’t amnesiate me enough to give Anywhere any on-its-own-merits consideration. I’ve been neck-deep in Tom’s trenches for a decade, I’m not about to be rescued with help from Anywhere producer Dave Sitek’s faraway roadside flares. Sitek, chiefly known for his excellently skewed work with TV On The Radio, was captain of the studio during Johansson’s recording stint down in New Orleans. Although he’s a successful knob-twiddler and instrumentalist, his attempt drags it beyond the county line of Waits’ dystopian, poorly lit nowhere.
Everything’s hazy and strangely muffled on Anywhere. Waits’ recordings overtly play with naturally occurring vocal distortion, but the production on songs from “Falling Down” to “I Don’t Want To Grow Up” hides her voice (granted, that’s understandable) in electro-gauze. Her rendition of late-Waits gem “Green Grass,” from 2004’s Real Gone, buries that album’s most beautiful and haunting lyric—“If the sky falls, mark my words, we’ll catch mockingbirds”—rendering it pointlessly indecipherable.
Adem, on the other hand, uses Takes to give us thoughtful, if occasionally left-field renditions of songs—more famous than the singer covering them—that can thus acceptably be re-contextualized. Six tracks in, he finally gives us his attempt at laptop legend Aphex Twin’s “To Cure A Weakling Child,” done in Adem’s relatively unwavering acoustic style, building up to a crescendo of glockenspiels and multi-track vocals. He presents songs from several alternative legends through the record—Low, The Breeders, The Smashing Pumpkins—but the big-ticket composition is Bjork’s “Unravel,” Ademized on uke to show you the song’s sparse compositional beauty and lyrical power.
I can imagine these cover albums, ultimately (and optimistically, in Johansson’s case), as gateway drugs. If one can believe the ridiculous marketing adjacent an official Anywhere I Lay My Head web page streaming the album (“Vote for ‘Falling Down’ on TRL!!”), then perhaps the kids will take a few hits of it through adolescence but move on to snorting harder stuff in their twenties. (Kids, if you’re reading this: Buy a couple tabs of Rain Dogs.)
Adem, however, is a drug that will buzz you moderately on its own and point you toward a good deal of other controlled substances you may not have tried, from Yo La Tengo to Lisa Germano. If you’re a social user, take something with Adem at Brooklyn’s Union Hall on June 10. Mixing red Adems (covers, mind you) with blue Adems (he has two albums of his own material) should be safe enough. If you accidentally get too high, just find a safe place ‘til it all wears off. Anywhere you lay your head should be fine.
The already-maligned-prior-to-a-single-note-leaking, actress-turned-vocalist’s late-May debut is wordlessly making—or at least attempting—some kind of statement. Through the full duration of the bombastic, organ-led, two-and-a-half minute opening track, “Fawn,” Scarlett Johansson is noticeably (though not devastatingly) absent from the start of her debut LP, Anywhere I Lay My Head, a cover album of revered oddball Tom Waits’ junkyard songomalies.
That stands in sharp contrast to the lead cut from, and general approach of, Takes, a just-released 12-track, PJ-Harvey-to-Pinback covers album assembled by subdued British folkie Adem. Since Johansson and Waits are plotted at markedly different quadrants on the fame/credibility matrix, her decision to take on ol’ Tom immediately shrouded the album in a fog of skepticism. Conversely, the largely unknown Adem (who?), better known as the bass player in noise-rockers Fridge (who?) leads Takes with a rendering of “Bedside Table” (what?), a song by the defunct ’90s Texan band Bedhead (again, who?). Expectations for Adem, therefore, are lower than Waits’ trademark Winstons-and-Wild-Turkey grumble.
It’s not so difficult to figure this one out: Adem wins. Cover songs, and to an exponentially greater degree, cover albums, are weighed down chiefly by issues of familiarity. Johansson is preposterously encumbered: half simply by her movie-star-in-the-studio turn and in equal measure by the charmingly shambolic, broken-axeled heap that is Waits’ cult-a-logue (selected both for it’s solidity and, perhaps, as a fast-and-easy cred grab). Adem’s “Bedside Table” rendering, alternately, is valuably weightless; he prettily strums an acoustic and tells the listener of their own domestically violent experience: “You cut your head on the bedside table,” the ugliness of a briefly described event brightly contrasted by gentle harmony.
That gash in my head, however, doesn’t amnesiate me enough to give Anywhere any on-its-own-merits consideration. I’ve been neck-deep in Tom’s trenches for a decade, I’m not about to be rescued with help from Anywhere producer Dave Sitek’s faraway roadside flares. Sitek, chiefly known for his excellently skewed work with TV On The Radio, was captain of the studio during Johansson’s recording stint down in New Orleans. Although he’s a successful knob-twiddler and instrumentalist, his attempt drags it beyond the county line of Waits’ dystopian, poorly lit nowhere.
Everything’s hazy and strangely muffled on Anywhere. Waits’ recordings overtly play with naturally occurring vocal distortion, but the production on songs from “Falling Down” to “I Don’t Want To Grow Up” hides her voice (granted, that’s understandable) in electro-gauze. Her rendition of late-Waits gem “Green Grass,” from 2004’s Real Gone, buries that album’s most beautiful and haunting lyric—“If the sky falls, mark my words, we’ll catch mockingbirds”—rendering it pointlessly indecipherable.
Adem, on the other hand, uses Takes to give us thoughtful, if occasionally left-field renditions of songs—more famous than the singer covering them—that can thus acceptably be re-contextualized. Six tracks in, he finally gives us his attempt at laptop legend Aphex Twin’s “To Cure A Weakling Child,” done in Adem’s relatively unwavering acoustic style, building up to a crescendo of glockenspiels and multi-track vocals. He presents songs from several alternative legends through the record—Low, The Breeders, The Smashing Pumpkins—but the big-ticket composition is Bjork’s “Unravel,” Ademized on uke to show you the song’s sparse compositional beauty and lyrical power.
I can imagine these cover albums, ultimately (and optimistically, in Johansson’s case), as gateway drugs. If one can believe the ridiculous marketing adjacent an official Anywhere I Lay My Head web page streaming the album (“Vote for ‘Falling Down’ on TRL!!”), then perhaps the kids will take a few hits of it through adolescence but move on to snorting harder stuff in their twenties. (Kids, if you’re reading this: Buy a couple tabs of Rain Dogs.)
Adem, however, is a drug that will buzz you moderately on its own and point you toward a good deal of other controlled substances you may not have tried, from Yo La Tengo to Lisa Germano. If you’re a social user, take something with Adem at Brooklyn’s Union Hall on June 10. Mixing red Adems (covers, mind you) with blue Adems (he has two albums of his own material) should be safe enough. If you accidentally get too high, just find a safe place ‘til it all wears off. Anywhere you lay your head should be fine.
