She & Him: Volume One [MERGE]

Why you'll love it

This Merge LP comes with a full album download. Paste named Volume One the best album of 2008, it has sold more than 300,000 copies in the US, and "Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?" made Rolling Stone's 100 best songs of 2008.

This edition

• Download card included

About the album

Zooey Deschanel wrote the songs and sang them; M. Ward produced, played guitar and kept everything warm and slightly sepia-toned. The pair recorded across the fall of 2006 and winter of 2007 at Blue Rooms and Type Foundry in Portland, Oregon, with extra engineering at Arc in Omaha by Mike Mogis, and Merge put it out in March 2008.

Deschanel's originals have a gentle, vintage glow. Tom Hagerman's strings open "Sentimental Heart," "This Is Not a Test" and "Black Hole" shimmer, and "Change Is Hard" gets a dose of steel guitar. Ward's arrangements frame three well-chosen covers: Smokey Robinson's "You Really Got a Hold on Me," the Beatles' "I Should Have Known Better" and a closing "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot." Patrick Caldwell of the Austin American-Statesman heard a gentle Orbisonian charm in it all. Rachel Blumberg and Adam Selzer add percussion, and Peter Broderick plays strings on two songs.

A second video for "Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?" reunited the team from (500) Days of Summer, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and director Marc Webb included. Somewhere in the credits Mike Coykendall is listed on mouth bass, an instrument we've never once managed to stock.

Also at Kops: more She & Him on vinyl · browse Alternative

Tracklist

Listen

On Merge (cat# MRG324), a reissue of the 2008 album.