when I look to you, you look so bored

Despite the fact that I get irrationally angry with Zooey Deschanel's character in (500) days of Summer (says a lot about my past relationships I think), I do love her quite a lot. She's just so darn cute and cool and pretty and has nice hair and wears lovely clothes AND she can sing! In fact, have you ever noticed how many of her films she sings in? Well I've not counted, but it's a lot of them. In fact she sings so well, that's she's even in a band. If you don't already know about them, they're called She & Him - it's just Zooey and a guy called Matt Ward and the sound is kind of gentle, folky pop. What I really like about them is that everything's very simple. By simple I mean, they're just very much 'about the music'. And I mean that in the least pretentious way possible. There's not a lot of production on their tracks, it's mostly just voices and instruments; maybe it makes me sound like an old woman, but most of the time I hate when artists do loads of post-production on songs and use all that computery/technical/synthy stuff (see how I really know what I'm talking about here?) - why can't they just sing?! Anyway, She & Him's sound is very pure and Zooey's voice is dreamy. Also, she and Matt do most of the backing vocals themselves too - they're very good at harmonies (something which always impresses me, because I'm pretty shit at them). Also, their two albums are simply called Volume One and Volume Two. And they don't have a load of posey photos in their album sleeves - they're just illustrated with cute, whimsical drawings (not that I have an issue with artists being pictured on their own records - it wasn't that long ago I was gushing over Paloma Faith's album images). And the actual CD itself just comes in a little card sleeve, rather than a plastic case. See what I mean? It's all very simple. Just music for the sake of music. There's something very refreshing about that, don't you think?

Cover and insert from Volume One, designed by Maggie Fost

Cover from Volume Two, designed by Kate Quinby

Anyway, if you do nothing else this evening, watch this video - I defy you not to love Zooey!