The Singles Jukebox

It’s big in France. You’d have to ask them why…

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[5.58]

Alfred Soto: This guy is still at it? Maybe Yorn is cleverer than the rest of us: Scarlet Johansson as sound effect competing with the distorted guitar hook. The former’s so diffident that Meg White looks like Dusty Springfield in comparison, while the latter was ingenious in 1994.
[3]

Anthony Miccio: This tumor seems benign at the moment, but we should probably cut it out just to be safe.
[5]

Spencer Ackerman: Hey OK! The kids are getting Kinky, growing their eyebrows long… Pete and Scarlet sing to each other about how both of them are OK with keeping their relationship open and casual. There isn’t much interesting about Scarlett’s vocals, and they’re cooked to the point of flavorlessness. But I like the late-60s Kinks, and so I like this.
[5]

Pete Baran: ScarJo (as I believe she is called in Heat) shows off her acting chops here, doing a passable approximation of the recent smoky bar singer vibe, and the backing feels like decaffeinated Mark Ronson, but its Yorn’s song and he is the best thing on it. If you can get past the “All My Lovin'” rip, it’s a jolly little piece of frippery which buggers off just before it annoys.
[5]

Martin Kavka: In everything she has ever done, Scarlett Johansson says “Hey boys! Make me the repository of your fantasies!” Perhaps her entire career represents a model of culture in which the line between “muse” and “whore” is erased. Nevertheless, it is also possible that she has kept something in reserve over the past decade, something that she refuses to give up to the men who spend their time fixedly gazing at her beauty. I’ve usually sided for the first option. But Yorn gives her a wonderful role in this indie-hootenanny anthem that is best likened to a pop version of a Lorrie Moore short story. ScarJo’s a woman with a taste for melodrama looking for meaning with a man equally in love with drama for its own sake. In the last minute, when he sings “You don’t relate to me, no girl”, she softly coos “You can leave whenever you want out”, showing that she’s been gazing at and wisely judging him the whole while.
[9]

John Seroff: At the least, Johansson deserves credit for perseverance; after an ill-advised collection of overproduced Tom Waits covers (which, to be fair, is probably exactly what I’d make if I were a rich, well-connected wannabe pop star), she’s made the savvy move to release a long-in-the-can collabo with Yorn, an old hand in the VH1 folkie-pop scene and a good partner to protect Scarlett from charges of half-assed dilettantism. Yorn has gone on record that the idea for the project came from the Gainsbourg/Bardot duet “Bonnie and Clyde”, which sets the bar incredibly low for ScarJo and very high for Pete. She leaps it; he doesn’t. Johansson’s vocals are limited, uninteresting and reverbed half to death, but they’re certainly not a belly-flop. Yorn’s self-defined degree of difficulty is exponentially greater so it’s hardly a surprise that “Relator” is no “Je t’aime, Moi Non Plus”. YoJo lack Serge’s eccentric and engaging weirdness, his sensuality and drama. What’s left behind is one interesting distorted guitar motif, some sexless canoodling and a lot of half-flat mimosa still in the glass.
[5]

Ian Mathers: The music seems to be composed entirely of fillips of guitar feedback and subtle but crucial strings (plus, you know, a rhythm section), which is kind of neat and with the right vocalists would make “Relator” a great song. As it is, Yorn is the same black hole of affability he always is, and Johansson still sounds like a half-decent Amy Winehouse imitator who prefers sizzurp to crack. So they don’t improve things at all, but at least they don’t get in the way of what is actually a very good little song. Tune out the vocals and pay attention to those strings and you’ll be fine.
[7]