SHE’S played a ’70s teen whose love of music drives her to leave home in “Almost Famous” and was signed to play Janis Joplin in an ill-fated biopic of the rock legend. So it’s no surprise that Zooey Deschanel’s first album, released as part of a collaborative venture with M. Ward called She & Him, sounds plucked from a time gone by.
“I really love the sound of old recordings – the warmth and the richness,” says Deschanel, who grew up listening to acts like the Beach Boys, Linda Ronstadt and the Everly Brothers. “As we move further into the digital realm, music becomes less and less human sounding, and more like machines.”
But absolutely no one can say that about “Volume One,” the duo’s debut record, dropping Tuesday. This album sounds closer to Phil Spector’s “Wall of Sound” than anything produced in the digital era, with girl-group melodies and ’60s optimism dripping from every track.
The project came to be when Deschanel and Ward collaborated on a song for the soundtrack to one of her films, “The Go-Getter.” According to Deschanel, the creative spark was immediate.
“When we got together to record, it went really quickly, and sort of had a lot of velocity,” she says. “His ideas sparked my ideas, which sparked his ideas. It seemed like we were coming from the same sensibility musically, and had a similar idealism about music.”
Once the duo reconvened for this album in Ward’s Portland studio, Deschanel was just as impressed with his handiwork.
“He has so many great ideas: of how to orchestrate, the instrumentation, the arrangement, pretty much everything,” she says. “There’s a song called ‘I Was Made for You,’ where he did the most amazing guitar part, with a complementary guitar part overdubbed on top of it. I think it’s a pure stroke of genius.”
While Deschanel clearly has an affinity for the oldies, her vocal style on “Volume One” has a sensitive, almost fragile aura, which makes it seem a bit surprising that she was picked to play Joplin. While certainly not lacking power, it’s hard to hear the similarity with the infamous belter’s banshee wail.
Deschanel, who would have sung Joplin’s songs for the now-derailed flick, trained with a vocal coach to give her voice what she calls Joplin’s “grit.”
“I can belt pretty loudly, but the difference is the grit,” she says. “I can get a lot of power, but I just don’t have a lot of grit in my voice.”
As such, she enjoyed the chance to face down a harder, more demanding style.
“Joplin was a bit of stretch, definitely, but I enjoy challenge,” she says. “I was prepared. I had my voice all ready. But [her style is] very different from my musical sensibilities. The way I sing is different.”
“Volume One,” on the other hand, allows her to show the world what her singing is really all about, in a project she enjoyed so much that Volume Two might not be far off.
“I like to sing in my natural voice,” she says, “because it sounds genuine. A big part of this record was sincerity. It’s very sincere.”