Breaking down those harmonies was fun and challenging and sometimes mind-numbing. Brian Wilson’s tunes brought me so much happiness in a time that was difficult for everybody. So I had a lot of creative energy that needed to be expressed. I took a bit of time off when I had them, and right when I was, like, “All right, ready to start workin’ again,” the pandemic hit. We knew that whatever we had to do-whatever we could do-we’d have to do on our own. When COVID started, it was the perfect time for me to get my home studio going and start learning all these incredibly complex Brian Wilson songs. MATT WARD: When She & Him did a Christmas record years ago, Zooey and I realized we had something in common-maybe “obsession” is a good word-when it came to Brian Wilson’s work. This feels like a good time to ask how each of you has weathered the strange tumult of the past few years, when live performance essentially stopped, and we all turned inward, in both literal and figurative ways. I believe all three of us are part of what’s probably the last generation to come of age before that technology was ubiquitous. Smartphones are amazing for so many reasons, but I was more creative before there were constant apps to entertain me. In fact, my most creative time was probably childhood, pre-smartphone. Sometimes, from that boredom, things sprout up that are surprising and weird and fun. But, you know, it’s good to be bored sometimes.īeing bored always reminds me of being a little kid and squirming in the back seat of my parents’ sedan. I felt fine from day three on, and then I was just stuck at home for a week, twiddling my thumbs. I’m on day ten, so basically it’s all done. Our conversation has been condensed and edited. Deschanel and Ward and I scrapped plans to meet in person after Deschanel tested positive for COVID instead, we spoke over Zoom. I love this record!”ĭeschanel and Ward have each had fruitful careers outside of She & Him-Deschanel as an actress, best known for starring on the Fox series “New Girl” in the course of its seven-season run (and for a memorable turn as the Simon & Garfunkel-lovinging, record-spinning, cool older sister in Cameron Crowe’s “Almost Famous”), and Ward as a singer and songwriter, whose exquisitely composed and recorded folk rock sometimes recalls the pathos and beauty of Alex Chilton. When She & Him débuted “Melt Away: A Tribute to Brian Wilson” earlier this month, Wilson chimed in with a giddy statement of support: “The harmonies are beautiful and right on. In recent years, however, he has been prolific: last November, he released “At My Piano,” a collection of instrumental versions of songs by the Beach Boys, and “Long Promised Road,” the soundtrack to a documentary about his life and music. Wilson, who is eighty, suffered a psychotic break in the mid-nineteen-sixties, which may have been exacerbated by drug use, and which left him increasingly eccentric and reclusive. It makes sense, then, that for their most recent collaboration Deschanel and Ward took on the dazzling, intricate songs of Brian Wilson, the co-founder of the Beach Boys and the ur-voice of lonesome, sun-drenched, multitracked Americana. She & Him’s records-there are seven to date-feel as though they’ve been engineered for playback on a crackly AM radio, piped out the open window of some bohemian cabana while a pair of wooden-beaded curtains click in the breeze. Ward-have been making rich and woozy pop songs that nod to different genres (folk, country, jazz) but are chiefly defined by atmosphere. Since 2006, She & Him-the duo of Zooey Deschanel and Matt Ward, who records as M.
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