“My friend told me to take lots of pictures of Zooey Deschanel.” Alas, random audience member, your pal will have to rely on her day job for those — all photography at the Opera House was forbidden on this night. That thankfully dissuaded the people who go to shows so they can snap bad camera-phone shots every 10 seconds, and Deschanel must have felt relieved as well. The army of admirers was already making her blush.
Caricature paints actors-turned-musicians as preening egomaniacs, but Deschanel doesn’t conform to stereotype. Standing inside the Opera House alongside collaborator M. Ward (a.k.a. “Him”) on guitar — and, sporadically, a touring band — she was disarmingly shell-shocked and self-conscious, constantly glancing towards Ward for cues or encouragement. When applause greeted jaunty opener “Black Hole,” the indie gamine blurted out “hey, thanks” in what seemed like genuine surprise. She sang with lips pressed close to the mic, as if whispering it a secret. That’s part of her fantasy-girlfriend appeal, of course — Deschanel is the beauty who’s coy but not conceited, whose sweet twang conceals no teeth, who loves vintage threads and vintage records and vintage make-outs. You can hear that personality in her pipes alone (if it’s contrived, she sure can sell it) and She & Him’s show shared the same characteristics, for good and ill.
Like the big doll’s head wobbling atop her small body, Deschanel’s voice is delicately pretty; it fared best with “Sentimental Heart” and other slow, intimate numbers. When her band locked into a backbeat, like on the girl-group pastiche “I Was Made For You,” the vocals weren’t robust enough to register above those loud drums. A habit of singing a touch too fast didn’t help either.
Still, Ward’s nimble fingers tended to keep that nervousness in check, and it’s hard to completely screw up songs that are well-crafted as “Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?” The crowd didn’t care, anyway. A guy near me happily lip-synched for the entire set, obviously transfixed, and I thought that was cute — it’s the kind of goofy, guileless gesture that Deschanel probably would find romantic in our dreams. But She & Him still only have one album and a handful of shows under their retro belts. They squeezed in a cover of “Bring It On Home To Me” — that hurried, minimalist take actually worked, turning Sam Cooke’s despondent pleas into deadpan shrugs — and then unstoppable time met the immovable crush object.