CD reviews for Sept. 18, 2009

• By JOHN WIRT
• Music critic
• Published: Sep 18, 2009

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Pete Yorn and Scarlett Johansson
BREAK UP

Recorded in 2006, singer-songwriter Pete Yorn and singer-actress Scarlett Johansson’s minimally produced duet album, Break Up, deserves its belated release. It’s actually better than Johansson’s far-more-elaborate 2008 solo album of Tom Waits songs, Anywhere I Lay My Head.

Yorn composed eight of Break Up’s nine songs, inspired by, yes, a break up. He invited his friend, Johansson, to join him in a duet collection along the lines of the Serge Gainsbourg’s 1960s recordings with actress Brigitte Bardot. The resulting songs are often quiet, introspective musings. Opening track “Relator” is among the more extroverted performances, a fairly breezy hybrid of Beatles vocal harmonies and blues and boogie. Alongside Yorn, Johansson finds her voice in “Relator,” adopting Billie Holiday-like tone. Following a softly sung intro from Yorn, “I Don’t Know What To Do” turns into a classic country-styled duet. Unconventional music tracks characterize the songs throughout the disc, such as the lightly plucked banjo in “Wear and Tear” and bass synthesizer in the disc’s only non-Yorn composition, Chris Bell’s Big Star cult classic, “I Am the Cosmos.”

As appealing as Break Up’s minimalism is, some songs are so minimal they nearly float away. Otherwise, this is engagingly offbeat music making.

Boys Like Girls
LOVE DRUNK

Massachusetts pop-rock quartet Boys Like Girls returns with a solid follow-up to its major-label CD debut, a gold record that yielded the digital-sales hits “The Great Escape,” “Hero/Heroine” and “Thunder.”

Most Love Drunk songs, including the title track, are the definition of youthful energy. And just as lead singer Martin Johnson says in his new CD’s Columbia Records press release, his band performs as if music is second nature to them. Young country star Taylor Swift joins Johnson for one of the CD’s potential hits, the string-section featuring “Two Is Better Than One.”

The craftsmanship in Love Drunk is undeniable. Like the previous album, too, the band keeps lyrics and performances in an earnest tone. But all the crunchy electric guitar chords, a chord-progression in “Heart Heart Heartbreak” pulled straight from the Scorpions’ 1984 hit, “Rock You Like A Hurricane,” and the songs’ sound and song construction spark flashbacks to the ’80s hair metal of Poison, Def Leppard and Warrant. Less formula would have let Boys Like Girls’ talent rise even higher.