Anywhere I Lay My Head

Through it all, Johansson is just another instrument in the mix, and her willingness to allow the arrangements to transform Waits’ creaky intimacy into wide-eyed atmosphere ultimately results in the rare covers album that actually has its own identity.

Anywhere I Lay My Head is a starling achievement not because Ms. Scarlett has simply managed to cleverly re-imagine some assemblage of Tom Wait songs, but rather, because she has seized upon precisely why they affected us so much the first time round. [Spring 2008, p.91]

This is a brilliant album that will no doubt top some ‘best of 2008’ lists, but it’s hard to work out if it’s a one-off or not.

You might wish there was more from Waits' 70s barfly period--what would Johansson have made of Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis?--but it's a measure of this album's surprising allure that you're left wanting more.

It's a bravely eccentric selection and a captivating homage to a singular writer.

Nouveau synth-pop and shoegazer drones mightn’t seem like the wisest bedding for Tom Waits’s compositions, but Scarlett and Sitek know exactly what they’re doing.

While Johansson's debut is not as pleasant as Zooey Deschanel's work with M.Ward, Anywhere I Lay My Head will surely surprise Johansson's doubters; having grown to appreciate Scarlett Johansson for being more than a pretty face and mediocre actor, I can speak from experience.

There’s no in between for this one; it will go down as one of those love it or hate it records.

Against all odds, Anywhere I Lay My Head doesn't feel like a vain stunt. Mostly.

The whole set is heavily dosed with reverb and electro-swirls, perhaps to cloak Johansson's vocal limitations as much as to add psychedelia.

The album is fine enough, undeniably modish and much better than you might anticipate. [June 2008, p.136]

Perversely given the record’s comprehensive musical overhaul it’s perhaps a surfeit of respect for the source material that proves Anywhere's undoing; for all its undoubted accomplishments there’s a lingering suspicion that this is too safe, too respectable a record to do justice to an artist who remains forever mid-topple from the bar stool in the popular consciousness.

Johansson’s bland, flat contralto leaves you admiring the Cocteau Twins-style sonic backdrops and wondering how another singer--Liz Fraser, perhaps?--might improve them.

Sonically, it's a tour de force.... But the success of this record depends on Johansson and she's not up yo the task. [June 2008, p.73]

At its core, though, Anywhere I Lay My Head is a curious project that never seems to light on any raison d'etre beyond indulging Johansson's love of Tom Waits.

As workarounds go, Scarlett Johansson’s collection of Tom Waits songs, Anywhere I Lay My Head verges on the heroic.

Sitek’s technique is, successfully, fascinating and unexpected. But so many purposes and conceits, both avoided and embraced, collide over the course of the album’s eleven tracks that technique simply overwhelms melody and Johansson’s voice both, but mostly whatever it is about the song that Waits nailed to the wall in the first place.

On several songs, Johansson gets lost in Sitek's swelling production, which may suggest a weak interpreter or a dearth of vocal personality but adds to the album's pervading dreaminess.

Beyond the fact that her voice is deep enough for her to front Crash Test Dummies, there's nothing particularly compelling about Scarlett Johansson's singing.

This isn’t a horrible album by any means, but it also isn’t very good. Sitek has done an astounding job of creating misty atmospheres and it’s these small touches that aid the album in becoming an interesting listen.

Johansson simply lacks the intensity to stay afloat in Waits's whirlpools of ear-drummed madness.

Johansson's voice is unremarkable and her pitch sometimes unsteady; she's a faintly goth Marilyn Monroe lost in a sonic fog.

In burying Johansson's vocals so deeply in the druggy ambiance, producer David Andrew Sitek (of TV on the Radio) means well but ends up obscuring Waits' great tunes.

Anywhere I Lay My Head doesn't quite work, but it can't quite be dismissed, either.

The album itself is kind of an afterthought; what its creation says metatextually about the artists responsible for it is more interesting than any of the music it contains.

She isn't a traditionally talented vocalist, which in itself can be fine. But she isn't much of an interpreter, either; she brings the flat, throaty tones of the heavily drugged to songs that beg for passion.

Much of this album's re-booting of Waits' back pages in an ambient '80s style is fussy and forgettable. [June 2008, p.112]

This album isn’t a total disaster, but it’s difficult to imagine most people wanting to listen to Anywhere I Lay My Head more than once.

Anywhere I Lay My Head is neither laughable nor unlistenable, but what's the most disappointing about it is that producer David Sitek of Tv on the Radio is its most prominent contributor, not Johansson. [Spring 2008, p.77]

The balance is tenuous, and the "Tinkerbell on cough syrup" effect that Sitek describes in the liner notes as his aesthetic brass ring sometimes comes off more like Scarlett out of her league.

These songs were already so impeccably performed that Johansson didn’t have very many new places to take them, and although her effort and nerve are commendable, “not as terrible as you thought it would be” just isn’t the same thing as good.

Anywhere I Lay My Head is a vanity project made by Scarlett Johansson, for Scarlett Johansson, and what's more, it sounds suspiciously like a desperate cry for credibility from a woman who doesn't actually need any.

Anywhere I Lay My Head falters on Johansson’s vocals, or lack of a distinctive voice.