Get into the passenger seat, roll down the window and rest your bare feet on the warm dashboard. Break Up was meant to be a project among friends, enter Pete Yorn and Scarlett Johansson, shelved away for no one to hear. Not us anyway. Not until two years later when Yorn’s close circle convinced him to. It’s an original piece of work, with the exception of one Big Star cover, that supposedly pays tribute to the cult classic recordings of Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot. And so, Johansson is Pete Yorn’s Brigitte and the album, through duets for the most part, bares the soul of a relationship with all its glory, loneliness and bedlam. Garage studio-produced by Sunny Levine, it’s rewarded with an unrefined air, beckoning for the Jack Kerouacs of the world to hit the open road. The album is after entitled… Break Up. A terse collection of nine tracks, the recordings add a little ‘new’ to the old sounds of sun-drenched 70s California. Stirred in is a little bit of banjo, a splatter of synth bass, abrupt endings and an echoing conscience. It certainly walks to its own metronome, maybe even painfully crawls at times and in so doing, loses my interest. But despite the sleepiness of it, Johansson’s smoky pouting vocals attunes to the mellow of journeyman Yorn. It’s definitely an upgrade for the actress turned aspiring singer, who came out last year with a slight washout of a debut with Anywhere I Lay My Head, and a publicity feat for the New Jersey man himself, even if, at the outset their Bonnie & Clyde adventure was to be just their own.
Key Tracks: Relator, Wear and Tear, I Am the Cosmos
Moods: Stylish, Intimate, Passionate, Romantic, Yearning, Reflective
Buy: Break Up
