Anywhere I Lay My Head

Sonically, it's a tour de force.... But the success of this record depends on Johansson and she's not up yo the task. [June 2008, p.73]

The balance is tenuous, and the "Tinkerbell on cough syrup" effect that Sitek describes in the liner notes as his aesthetic brass ring sometimes comes off more like Scarlett out of her league.

Sitek’s technique is, successfully, fascinating and unexpected. But so many purposes and conceits, both avoided and embraced, collide over the course of the album’s eleven tracks that technique simply overwhelms melody and Johansson’s voice both, but mostly whatever it is about the song that Waits nailed to the wall in the first place.

This isn’t a horrible album by any means, but it also isn’t very good. Sitek has done an astounding job of creating misty atmospheres and it’s these small touches that aid the album in becoming an interesting listen.

Perversely given the record’s comprehensive musical overhaul it’s perhaps a surfeit of respect for the source material that proves Anywhere's undoing; for all its undoubted accomplishments there’s a lingering suspicion that this is too safe, too respectable a record to do justice to an artist who remains forever mid-topple from the bar stool in the popular consciousness.

In burying Johansson's vocals so deeply in the druggy ambiance, producer David Andrew Sitek (of TV on the Radio) means well but ends up obscuring Waits' great tunes.

At its core, though, Anywhere I Lay My Head is a curious project that never seems to light on any raison d'etre beyond indulging Johansson's love of Tom Waits.

This album isn’t a total disaster, but it’s difficult to imagine most people wanting to listen to Anywhere I Lay My Head more than once.

Much of this album's re-booting of Waits' back pages in an ambient '80s style is fussy and forgettable. [June 2008, p.112]

These songs were already so impeccably performed that Johansson didn’t have very many new places to take them, and although her effort and nerve are commendable, “not as terrible as you thought it would be” just isn’t the same thing as good.

On several songs, Johansson gets lost in Sitek's swelling production, which may suggest a weak interpreter or a dearth of vocal personality but adds to the album's pervading dreaminess.

Johansson simply lacks the intensity to stay afloat in Waits's whirlpools of ear-drummed madness.

The album is fine enough, undeniably modish and much better than you might anticipate. [June 2008, p.136]

Johansson's voice is unremarkable and her pitch sometimes unsteady; she's a faintly goth Marilyn Monroe lost in a sonic fog.

The album itself is kind of an afterthought; what its creation says metatextually about the artists responsible for it is more interesting than any of the music it contains.

Beyond the fact that her voice is deep enough for her to front Crash Test Dummies, there's nothing particularly compelling about Scarlett Johansson's singing.

Anywhere I Lay My Head is a vanity project made by Scarlett Johansson, for Scarlett Johansson, and what's more, it sounds suspiciously like a desperate cry for credibility from a woman who doesn't actually need any.

She isn't a traditionally talented vocalist, which in itself can be fine. But she isn't much of an interpreter, either; she brings the flat, throaty tones of the heavily drugged to songs that beg for passion.

As workarounds go, Scarlett Johansson’s collection of Tom Waits songs, Anywhere I Lay My Head verges on the heroic.

Johansson’s bland, flat contralto leaves you admiring the Cocteau Twins-style sonic backdrops and wondering how another singer--Liz Fraser, perhaps?--might improve them.