Scarlett Johansson-Anywhere I Lay My Head (2008)

The Hollywood hottie it’s respectable to like: it was always clear that if Scarlett Johansson launched a musical career, it wouldn’t be a sub-Britney exercise in bottom-wiggling. Even so, a whole album of Tom Waits covers is pushing the boat out further than anyone could have foreseen.
Johansson’s perceived coolness is built on a mixed bag of performances: beguiling in the Coens' 'The Man Who Wasn't There', loathsome in the overrated ‘Lost In Translation’.

‘Anywhere I Lay My Head’ is a record which, with its My Bloody Valentine-esque multi layered and reverb-heavy production (courtesy of TV on the Radio’s David Sitek, with guitar by Nick Zinner of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs), could have been released on Creation/4AD in the late 1980s. It’s a pleasure to hear Waits’ songs delivered in a voice other than his own gruff growl.
Johansson is no great singer herself, but her bovine lowing, multitracked and echo-laded in excelsis, is as demure as her screen persona. Being able to rope in none other than David Bowie as a backing vocalist is a perk of Scarlett’s star status.
A collaborative effort and a triumph of the producer’s art it may be, rather than the statement of a sole auteur, but as a pop artefact ‘Anywhere I Lay My Head’ isn’t remotely diminished by that. - Simon Price

track list:

1. Fawn (originally on Tom Waits' album Alice)  

2. Town with No Cheer (originally on Tom Waits' album Swordfishtrombones)  

3. Falling Down (originally on Tom Waits' album Big Time)  

4. Anywhere I Lay My Head (originally on Tom Waits' album Rain Dogs)  

5. Fannin Street (originally on Tom Waits' album Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards)  

6. Song for Jo

7. Green Grass (originally on Tom Waits' album Real Gone) 

8. I Wish I Was in New Orleans (originally on Tom Waits' album Small Change) 

9. I Don't Want to Grow Up (originally on Tom Waits' album Bone Machine)  

10. No One Knows I'm Gone (originally on Tom Waits' album Alice)  

11. Who Are You? (originally on Tom Waits' album Bone Machine)

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