She & Him might need a time machine. After three albums and a Christmas record, the duo’s pretty, uncomplicated pop songs keep harkening back to decades they were too young to experience first-hand; a bit of 1960s Loretta Lynn country here, a bit of '70s Carpenters’ sunny pop there. So it was hardly surprising when M. Ward and Zooey Deschanel announced that their next release would be Classics, a cover album of 13 of their favorite old-school songs.
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. Clearly, a classic song is a love song. 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.
She & Him aren’t trying to surprise anyone with these covers; there’s no off-the wall instrumental experimentation, no dramatic shift in lyrics. 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. "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. It would make delightful title music if Deschanel ever wants to star in a version of "New Girl" set in the mid-'70s.
Even when She & Him push their sonic boundaries a little, the effect is still subtle and sophisticated. 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. They take "Unchained Melody" to an absolutely haunting place, featuring just Deschanel and Ward’s guitar, her words echoed by a ghostly ensemble choir.
A 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. The songs themselves play like romantic mini-dramas, with pleas for lovers to stay and odes to loneliness. That said, some narratives call for a singer with more force. 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. And Dusty Springfield’s jangling "Stay Awhile" is muted considerably in She & Him’s rendition, as Deschanel’s voice takes a somber turn.
Even though they're working with dated lyricism by 2014’s standards, saccharine lines like "When you’re strolling through the wherezis, you need a whozis to lean upon" don’t sound contrived or silly in She & Him's hands. "Funny, each time I fall in love," Deschanel sings on Bing Crosby’s hit, "It’s always you." If Classics proves anything, it’s that these songs stick around for a reason.
