Scarlett Johansson
Anywhere I Lay My Head
(Atco/Rhino)

Perhaps it was one of those ideas that had the proverbial “sounds good on paper” factor going for it. Take a Hollywood it-girl—one who we know can at least sing passable karaoke (see Lost in Translation)—and give her the songs of one of America’s foremost modern composer/performers, a hip producer, and the guest superstar who fell to earth. Scarlett Johansson’s foray from silver screen to singing is instead a dull car crash of Tom Waits songs (plus one lame number penned by Johansson) as delivered by a singer who sounds like she doesn’t care, mired in needlessly thick and ethereal production.

Maybe it’s unfair to suggest that Johansson sounds like she’d rather be off somewhere else eating cheese, but her performance here seems so removed that it’s hard to sit through all 11 tracks. Johansson’s deep register doesn’t bear the richness of a stormy torch singer or the hard-worn, churchy authenticity of a blues belter that might better serve Waits’ songs. Instead, she sounds like a listless hipster aping Nico. The difference between Johansson and the famed/doomed Teutonic chanteuse of the “Velvet Underground and” brand, however, is that Nico made her far-from-perfect voice something special by matching an iced blood delivery with an otherworldly, distanced grace. Johansson’s detachment and droll delivery are like a lackluster acting performance in already cardboard film. That puts Anywhere I Lay My Head closer in relation to The Nanny Diaries than to Frank’s Wild Years.

Then there’s the music itself. Waits’ songs already have a broken beauty to them. That’s of the broken variety that doesn’t need to—nor should it ever—be fixed. There’s little to like here, from Johansson’s vamping through an overly atmospheric “Town With No Cheer” to a reprehensible and joyless synth pop take on “I Don’t Want to Grow Up.” Her co-conspirator in this mess is up-to-this -point bulletproof musician/producer David Sitek, of the acclaimed avant-rock outfit TV on the Radio. The liner notes say that Sitek wanted to reinvent Waits’ song into the sound of a 4AD record, a la the nuanced complexities of the Cocteau Twins. Bad choice. The fuzzy looped guitars and faux dream pop grandiosity only further lend to the vapid feeling in the air.

Not even David Bowie—who sings backups on “Fallin Down” and “Fannin Street”—can save Anywhere I Lay My Head. Bowie’s appearance brings to mind the themes of stardom and ego. They were the things the things that brought down his most emblematic creation, the title hero of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust. Similarly, Bowie’s construction of the rock band Tin Machine was professed to be an attempt to shed his own celebrity and ego by getting back to basics and being in democratic four-piece. In the case of Johansson’s debut record, fame and ego are the vehicles that drove to the scene of this unfortunate accident.

—donny kutzbach