Wowie Zooey

Zooey Deschanel is at a loss for words. “Oooh...Hmmm,” muses the singer/actress, best known for her eyelash batting turn in last year’s smash rom-com-for-people-who-hate-rom-coms, 500 Days Of Summer. “You know... I don’t really have too much of an opinion on that.”

We’re talking about her fellow Los Angelino and distant musical rival Katy Perry, to whom Deschanel, as big-blue-eyes adorable in real life as on screen, bears a frankly uncanny resemblance. Which is ironic considering how far apart they are as musicians – where Perry is all faux-lesbian come-ons and lollipop sucking Lolita-isms, Deschanel deals in sepia-tinted thrift-store pop, channelling artists such as Sam Cooke and Doris Day.
Has it been pointed out she has a lookalike no less famous than herself? Zooey doesn’t know what to say.
“I mean...,” stutters Deschanel, her verbal dexterity temporarily deserting her. “Um... You know... I don’t really...”
Oo-kay. We were just asking, is all. Happily, she’s far more comfortable discussing her new LP, a collaboration with Portland mooch-rocker Matt Ward released under the She And Him moniker. As was the case with the pair’s 2006 debut, the new album, entitled Volume Two (the first record was - quelle surprise – Volume One), has the feel of a recently unearthed treasure from the early ‘70s. Singing from the back of her throat in a little gal lost coo, Deschanel evokes the vintage ennui of Carole King whilst Ward taps Phil Spector via doo-wop arrangements and patented wall o’ fuzz production.
“I gravitate towards older sounds for a number of reasons,” reflects Deschanel. “First of all, I like them. But also, I like the idea of not being too influenced by stuff that's happening now.”
She sounds like an old soul trapped in a young body.
“When you listen to old music, you’re not listening to it in the context of the time,” she offers. “Like, when I’m listening to Sam Cooke, I’m not listening to it in the time of Sam Cooke, if you know what I mean. I feel you can listen to it purely for the music and the lyric. If I listened to something that came out yesterday... there’s the extra context of it being brand new. In a way, that creates a bias. I want it to be about the music. I’m trying to keep my influences pure.”
With her bottomless blue peepers and Urban Outfitters chic, Deschanel has long been a pin-up for sensitive indie boys. However, Zooey’s profile blasted through the troposphere last year with 500 Days Of Summer, her first significant lead role (until then she was arguably best known for singing in the shower in Elf and for playing Trillium in Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy). Given the spell film stars cast over our culture, one wonders if her burgeoning screen fame has brought an influx of TMZ-weaned gawpers to her live shows.
Shrugging, she demurs.
“I was doing movies for a long time before that. I’ve always had almost exactly the same degree of success. I don’t know if I can really tell how that film changed things. I don’t think so – we’ve always had a great group of fans. We have more fans now that when we started, true. But they’ve always been fantastic. That's one of the things I’ve always considered very fortunate.”
Before our interview, Zooey’s management politely asks that we focus on ‘the music’ and keep the showbiz stuff to a minimum. Not that Deschanel is embarrassed at making her living from acting. However, it annoys her deeply that people assume she is the pretty ‘face’ of She And Him, with the real creative spark coming from Ward. Just how sensitive she is to such charges becomes clear early in the conversation when she cuts me off mid-question in order to point out that she is the songwriter in the partnership (if you’d allowed us to finish Zooey, it would become clear we were perfectly aware of this).
“I write the songs and send them to Matt,” she protests. “He listens to them and comes up with production ideas. Then we go into the studio and record them. The whole process is pretty clear, which makes it go a lot more quickly.”
Do they ever have rows about how a song should sound? She shakes her head.
“We almost never disagree. We have a really good rapport. I can’t think of a single time we’ve disagreed.”
Born in Burbank in 1980, Deschanel is named after the character in Salinger’s Franny And Zooey (she didn’t read the book until her twenties, for fear she would find it a letdown). She is the younger sister of Bones star Emily Deschanel and the daughter of famed cinematographer Caleb Deschanel, whose credits include The Right Stuff and (ugh) The Passion Of The Christ (he was also, along with Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese, a founder of maverick movie studio American Zoetrope).
When Zooey was growing up, the family lived a footloose lifestyle, traveling to wherever Caleb was shooting a movie. Living abroad for long stints, she became somewhat of a loner. It’s period of her life she feels has shaped her as an adult, and as a musician.
“I‘ve always had a bit of a happy/sad, melancholy/joyous feeling that just follows me around,” she sighs. “I definitely think that being isolated as a child can do that to you. I’m sure it influenced the way I am today.”
The cliché, of course, is that independent music is a font of authenticity where Hollywood is horrible, fake and plastic. With a foot in both worlds (she’s married to Death Cab For Cutie’s Ben Gibbard and previously dated actor/rocker Jason Schwartzman), what’s Deschanel’s take on the difference?
“There’s authenticity and inauthenticity in any place, you know,” she says. “I’m from Los Angeles. There are a lot of incredible people making films who are very authentic. And there are people making music who are not at all authentic. You have to use your own sense of judgement to sort between the two."
Still, it must strike her as unfair that, if you're a musician who moves into acting, you're praised for your versatility (hello David Bowie, Eminem). Whereas, actors who start bands (Scarlett Johansson, Keanu Reeves etc) are written off as dilettantes trading on their celebrity.
“Well, it’s not true obviously,” she says, a little tartly. “Things that have no basis in reality – I don’t pay them a huge amount of attention. I don’t care what people think of me. I just try to be as sincere as possible. Then, you know, hopefully everything falls into place.”

She And Him's Volume Two is out now on Domino