Via Pitchfork

Scarlett Johansson has a type, it seems-- at least when it comes to recording music. Johansson's first album, the better-than-anyone-realized 2008 drug-pop swooner Anywhere I Lay My Head, consisted almost entirely of Tom Waits covers. And later this year, Johansson and singer/songwriter Pete Yorn will release a collaborative album reportedly inspired by Serge Gainsbourg's duets with Brigitte Bardot, according to USA Today.

So if you're a legendary songwriter with a craggy seen-it-all voice and a permanently unimpressed hangdog facial expression, you will might eventually inspire a Scarlett Johansson album. Leonard Cohen-- call your manager!

USA Today reports that Johansson and Yorn teamed up with producer Sunny Levine to record Break Up, which the newspaper describes as "a song cycle that chronicles a tempestuous affair." Yorn wrote eight of the album's nine songs, the other being a cover of "I Am the Cosmos" by Big Star's Chris Bell. The album was actually recorded in 2006, so it pre-dates Anywhere I Lay My Head.

The first single, the amiable rockabilly chug "Relator", is currently streaming on the album's website. Judging by that, Johansson does a better job channelling Bardot than Pete Yorn does playing Gainsbourg, but that shouldn't exactly come as a shock.

Break Up is due September 8 from Atco/Rhino. Yorn will also release a solo album, Back and Forth, on June 23.


http://thebreakupalbum.com/

Listen as Yorn, Johansson 'Break Up'
By Edna Gundersen, USA TODAY

The melodic relationship arc of singer/songwriter Pete Yorn and actress Scarlett Johansson: They get together, sing a few love songs and break up.

It's not exactly tragic, since Break Up is a collection of duets the pair recorded with producer Sunny Levine. Yorn's eight original compositions and Big Star founder Chris Bell's I Am the Cosmos form a song cycle that chronicles a tempestuous affair. The album, out Sept. 8 on Atco/Rhino, was inspired by Serge Gainsbourg's 1960s recordings with Brigitte Bardot, a concept that came to Yorn in a dream. He later reached out to Johansson, who sewed up her vocals in two afternoon sessions. A free stream of opening tune Relator is available at thebreakupalbum.com.

Break Up was recorded two years before Johansson released her debut album of Tom Waits covers, 2008's Anywhere I Lay My Head. Yorn will release his fourth studio album, Back and Fourth, June 23.

http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/news/2009-05-21-break-up-album_N.htm

not a fan