duggup

This is fun, head over to http://www.myspace.com/sheandhim and play “Sentimental Heart”. It’s just wonderful, She & Him start the song off with a really intimate performance and production at the start of the song, it sucks you in and then it just turns into this huge massed choir ending. Wonderfully schizoid stuff. But this isn’t what got me.

Over at Faronheit there was mention of an NPR show with She & Him produced by Steve Lilywhite. (Steve Lilywhite produced Big Country’s first two albums and is just amazing. It’s enough for me to see his credit on an album and I have to have it… Hmm I notice I haven’t done Big Country Yet. Serious oversight that).  Faronheit were right, the She and Him: The Lillywhite Session and NPR are magic. It’s only three songs but… wow. Killer performance and great production. Straight to the MP3 player for these puppies.

Here is some stuff about the band…

Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward first met on the set of the film The Go-Getter, which the actress had a starring role in. The director of the film, Martin Hynes, introduced the two and asked them to do sing a duet together to be played at the end credits of the film. They decided to do a Richard and Linda Thompson song entitled “When I Get to the Border”. The two bonded over their shared interest in certain songs and artists. M. Ward, having heard Deschanel sing previously in the film Elf, was surprised that she wrote songs herself and had many home demos. He asked her to send them to him. Deschanel was shy about music, but sent them to him anyway. M. Ward called her a short time later, and told her that he would like to record her songs properly, and their band She & Him was formed.

She & Him made their debut record as a love letter to the musicians who inspired it. Volume One (Merge Records) introduces a boy and girl choir hell-bent on making music the old-fashioned way: by hand – and with as few machines as humanly possible.

The She & Him story begins when in 2006 , renowned one man band M. Ward, recorded a duet with a girl named Zooey Deschanel. A delightful recording session, the experience lead to a dialogue between the two about collaborating further. This, in turn, led to Deschanel admitting to secretly making dozens and dozens of home demos and hoarding them like acorns for the winter. Sick and tired of being stingy and secretive about music, Deschanel realized that if songs were acorns then this was indeed her wintertime: she sent the recordings to Ward and these demos became the basis for their first record, entitled Volume One.

So thanks to faronheit and a it’s safe to say that this one is Highly Recommended

Websites at http://www.myspace.com/sheandhim and http://www.sheandhim.com/