She and Him - Black Hole

Artist: She and Him

Song: Black Hole

Album: Volume One (2008)

 

The grammatical inequality in the band name She & Him is significant, even if it's a joke or a mistake: The female with the nominative pronoun is Zooey Deschanel, the actress whose credits include Elf, All the Real Girls, and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. The male with the objective pronoun is Matt Ward, the John Fahey and Hank Williams acolyte who in eight years has risen from indie label obscurity to, arguably, the three or four spot in the active Merge Records rotation. Both Deschanel and Ward have their own successful careers, but on Volume One-- the first offering from their new collaborative band She & Him-- him is less than she. Although Ward produced the record and closet songwriter Deschanel only started sharing her songs at his request, the album succeeds mostly because those songs feel like familiar AM radio classics and because her voice offers instant emotional empathy. Ward's tasteful playing and sparse arrangements just serve to make something good that much better.

(…) The him in question changes throughout Volume One, but she relates to the masculine through a consistently naïve romanticism, whether it's riding a tandem bicycle alone on the somehow upbeat "Black Hole"

(…) Deschanel writes old pop songs built around black-and-white, simplistic emotions and dotted with vintage sexual innuendo (see "Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?" and "Black Hole")

 

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My eyes are so bleary 
I guess I'm young but i feel so weary 
I've tried to express it 
But I think its all a bore 
Its at the heart of me, 
A very part of me 

Speak slowly, I can't hear you 
My mind keeps spinning closer and closer to the rain on the roof, 
And the rain in my head, and the things that you said 
People take it further ahead 
And it just gets so foggy 
It's nowhere in here 
And its everywhere else that I don't wanna be, 
But I'm stuck here getting misty over you 
I'm alone on a bicycle for two. 

Speak slowly, I can't hear you 
My mind keeps spinning closer and closer to the rain on the roof, 
and the rain in my head, and the things that you said 
People take it further ahead 
And it just gets so foggy 
It's nowhere in here 
And its everywhere else that I don't wanna be, 
But I'm stuck here getting misty over you 
I'm alone on a bicycle for two.

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