Too twee for me: Zooey Deschanel

I heard the new She & Him album for the first time tonight. No big surprise there: another album of fey twee-pop that would be bland as plain toast were it not slathered with so much of Zooey Deschanel's gooey, over-the-top-cutesiness that it hurts your teeth.

It's not Deschanel's voice that offends me so, although it far from impresses. It's the sense that she spends her entire life playing the lead in "Zooey: the girl so perfectly marketed to an 'indie' audience and so concerned with her twee image that when she finally farted for the first time in her entire life, an explosion of teacups, literary references, Belle, and Sebastian destroyed an entire state". Everything Deschanel does just feels so calculated: the band references, the role choices, the album artwork. It's all part of an elaborate character construction that, by taking itself so seriously, epitomizes the oft-percieved shallowness and pretentiousness of "indie" culture.

In an interview with Exclaim! in 2008, Deschanel answered the following questions posed to her and M. Ward thusly:

What’s your idea of a perfect Sunday?
She: Wake up early. Bake cookies and play piano. Take a walk where I hopefully see lots of cute dogs. Eat spaghetti squash. Watch a documentary.
Him: Rest.

How do you spoil yourself?
She: A New Yorker magazine and a bag of peanuts with shells. I'm a simple girl.
Him: Soy mochas.

You know what Ward answered to the first question? Rest. Rest! He would rest! That's reasonable, of course - wouldn't you? Or would you stack your day so high with idyllic, childlike activities that it made you seem hip, quirky and eerily unspoiled by real life interaction? She can't just say "peanuts," either, in response to the latter question. Deschanel has to mention that they're in the shell, otherwise, we wouldn't know that she was so cutely idiosyncratic.

And in case you still haven't seen it, here's the latest She & Him music video below. How is it different from Britney Spears' "Hit Me Baby One More Time"? Deschanel's wearing tights, and Britney Spears has never name-dropped the New Yorker.