When actress-singer extraordinaire Zooey Deschanel and Portland, Oregon singer-songwriter M. Ward issued the first volume of their now acclaimed She & Him collaboration in 2008, they set musical hearts aflutter with their timeless rendering of vintage pop, sugar-coated folk and humming rhythm ‘n’ roll. Pairing Deschanel’s heart-torn songwriting and pitch-perfect vocals with M. Wards production and arrangement, the record echoed with the most timeless of analogue qualities and garnered swathes of critical support in the process.
A couple of years on and they’ve issue
Volume Two, a record that glows with bigger, warmer arrangements, shimmering instrumental dynamics and gorgeous, confident vocal harmonies. We coaxed a few strained responses from a pleasant, but none too expansive M. Ward about the project, Deschanel’s growing confidence as singer-songwriter and making music that stands the test of time.
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Hey Matt, how are you?
Okay, great.
I’m really enjoying the new record…
Thankyou.
I just got it a couple of days ago, but it’s really beautiful and a lot a bigger than the first She & Him volume. Was that a real focus for this record, to beef up the arrangements and the sound?
Well, I loved the direction that Volume One was going towards and, production-wise, I didn’t want to make a 360-degree turn and do something that was going in an entirely different direction. I just wanted to go in the same direction as the first record, but just push it a little farther. I think that’s evident in the production and also in the songwriting.
At least in the delivery, Zooey seems to exude a different kind of confidence on this record. There’s more of a sense of surety in the way she projects and hits her notes. Did you get that feeling from her songs when you were making the record?
Well, I know just from working with Zooey live onstage that she’s becoming a more confident singer and I think that comes through on the new record.
Tell me a little about the process of making the record. Did you really undertake this record together, or was it more about passing ideas back and forth?
This one is different to the first one because we were able to test some of these songs on the road during the live shows, so that definitely changed the feel. But it’s really a process of listening to the demo, trying to see where it wants to go and letting the spirit guide you.
From my understanding, the first record was very much an accumulation of material that Zooey had been working on for a while and then passed it your way. What about this record? Were these songs more purpose-written in a sense?
Well Zooey’s a pretty prolific writer and she’s playing music all the time. She sends me the songs once she feels she has a foundation and it’s really a process of just taking those songs to the next level, which is recording them in a proper studio.
The songs dictate everything. I felt like this particular group of songs belonged together on the same record, and yeah, I love how it turned out.
She & Him - 'In The Sun'
I felt like that treatment on Zooey’s vocals really kind of brought your voices a little closer together, especially on tracks like ‘Ridin’ in My Car’, whereas on the first record the different timbres of each of your vocals were quite stark. Again, was that something you were conscious of, or just something that happened?
I was definitely conscious of it. We recorded at a studio in Los Angeles called The Village, which is where Fleetwood Mac recorded Tusk. I’ve always loved the sounds on that record and, you know, it was especially advantageous to work in that room. You can’t say enough about how architecture can change the sound of drums and voices.
So Volume One was recorded in my friend’s attic-studio, where I’ve been making most of my M. Ward records, so it stands to reason that Volume Two would have a bit of a fuller sound.
Was Volume Two recorded entirely at The Village?
Some of the stuff was recorded back in Portland, but most of it was in LA.
She & Him is definitely a shift for you in terms of authorship. Does that offer a very different kind of reward?
Yeah, absolutely. There’s something very rewarding in spending a year and a half recording your own songs, and it’s a different kind of reward spending a year and a half working on someone else’s songs that you believe in. So it’s definitely a different kind of reward, not more or less rich or valuable.
Do you feel that it gives you a really different vantage on the material?
Yeah, absolutely. I love the perspective of getting to work with somebody who has been living these songs for months or years, and then coming in and seeing it to its fruition. It’s just a really great perspective.
I’m guessing your engagement with Zooey’s material would be a lot more immediate than your own in an analytical sense. I can imagine that when you’re working on your own material you could often find yourself a little to deep inside it…
Yeah, I think it’s safe to say that we trust each other’s instincts very deeply and very seriously and that’s what makes the project tick.
At what point do the songs come to you? Are they in a relatively skeletal form, with a basic melody, or a little more developed, with ideas on instrumentation and so forth?
Most of the demos I receive are vocals and piano.
Right…
Yeah.
What about the covers on the record? Where did they come from?
We’re constantly covering songs because we love to cover people’s songs that we love. And Zooey suggested we try a song the Peter Davis made popular, ‘Gonna Get Along Without You Now’, and then I suggested ‘Ridin’ in My Car’ by NRBQ. Both of these particular cover versions just took on a life of their own in the studio and seemed to fit really well with the rest of the record, so those are the ones that made it onto the record. But yeah, we cover quite a lot of songs.
Each of the records – perhaps the first one more so – sound as though they could have been recorded at any point in the last few decades. I’m guessing that’s a major focus of this project, creating something that doesn’t have a timestamp as such.
I mean, you want to create something that’s going to stand the test of time. So if Zooey and I were making a film or writing a novel or something, the main goal would be to create something that’s going to last and not show it’s age. It’s the same with this.
Dan Rule
She & Him : Volume Two is out today through Spunk/EMI
sheandhim.com