While Maxine Brown and Aretha Franklin belt the chorus of "Oh No, Not My Baby" in a gesture of soulful refusal, Deschanel opts for tender restraint, so that the song’s metaphoric head-shaking suddenly becomes a limply apathetic shrug. That said, some narratives call for a singer with more force. The songs themselves play like romantic mini-dramas, with pleas for lovers to stay and odes to loneliness.
#Silver screen classics album series#
They take "Unchained Melody" to an absolutely haunting place, featuring just Deschanel and Ward’s guitar, her words echoed by a ghostly ensemble choir.Ī cinematic quality reverberates throughout Classics, and songs like "She", "Unchained Melody", and "We’ll Meet Again" were featured in or made for series or films. On "Teach Me Tonight", they manage to move the 1954 classic further into the past, painting the soulful tune with a sped-up '30s flare, layering back-up "oohs" and "aahs" under Deschanel’s lead vocals into a Boswell Sisters-worthy harmony. It would make delightful title music if Deschanel ever wants to star in a version of "New Girl" set in the mid-'70s.Įven when She & Him push their sonic boundaries a little, the effect is still subtle and sophisticated.
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"This Girl’s in Love With You", a slight twist on Herb Alpert’s "This Guy’s in Love With You", is highly reminiscent of the original, with a retro brass and woodwind arrangement. Instead, Classics is charming and sleepy in a '60s samba sort of way, filled with whispering percussion, light electric guitar solos, and string arrangements worthy of the silver screen. She & Him aren’t trying to surprise anyone with these covers there’s no off-the wall instrumental experimentation, no dramatic shift in lyrics.
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From Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong’s flirtatious duet "Would You Like to Take a Walk?" to Johnny Mathis’ sadly hopeful "It's Not for Me to Say", She & Him tuck a wide range of romantic ups and downs into this starry-eyed and glamorous little record. So, what makes a classic song? For She & Him, classic songs find their roots in country, soul, and jazz orthodoxy, and they’re culled from the eras in which these genres were arguably the most golden-the '30s, the '50s, the '70s.