She & Him - Volume Two

Volume Two has two sides to it, like Volume One. A sincere, heartfelt part, and a light, feel-good poppy part. And both have tons of harmony. However, Volume Two is different from Volume One because its songs don't have that feeling you get with Volume One where straight away, you know this is going to be an extremely sad, or extremely happy song. With Volume Two, your sort of stuck inbetween, trying to decide which one it's going to be. This is nice, but it means that there aren't many stand out songs. Volume One had Sentimental Heart, Why Do You Let Me Stay Here, This Is Not A Test, I Thought I Saw Your Face Today, Take It Back, and Sweet Darling. Volume Two has In The Sun, If You Can't Sleep, and maybe Brand New Shoes.

But enough of comparisons. This album has got tons of talent from the lovely-as-always Zooey Deschanel, great harmonies, like I mentioned before (If You Can't Sleep especially) and great melodies (In The Sun, Brand New Shoes, Me and You, Home). The rest of the songs kind of blend together, like Sing, a song that starts out to be about the TV show Cribs, but turns into a song about singing. WHAAA? Oh well. When you think about it, who could really write a whole song about Cribs anyway?

One other disappointment is that M. Ward is only really audible on two songs, Ridin' In My Car, and Me and You. His voice goes perfectly with Zooey's, they should have used it more on the album.

Overall, it's less than great, but it's more than good, if that makes sense. I'd buy it, if I were you.



-Julian