Mixed talent: Scarlett Johansson and Pete Yorn

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In 2001, Pete Yorn released his debut album, Songs For the Morning After, and the first half was really good.

At least three of my friends and I all listened to it – the first half, that is – loads. The New Jersey singer-songwriter had luxurious hair and an ­irresistible middle-of-the-road drawl that was perfect for the middle of the morning.

After that heady start, he never did much of note again, until 2006 when he recorded an album with rent-a-muse Scarlett Johansson. I’m warning you, 2006 was a bad year for Johansson. Not only did she star in the dreary The Black Dahlia, she made the worst film of her and Woody Allen’s career, Scoop. Is this album any better? And why has it been locked away like an Austrian child for the past three years?

"She’s got the sandpaper on velvet voice and disinterested thing down to a tee"

It starts well enough (a Yorn trait?) with Realtor, a pert piece of prairie pop buoyed along with Johansson’s loose bluegrass twang. The album continues to chug in the general direction of easy country, ­meandering at times towards Fleetwood Mac territory with a fiddle, banjo or scrape of boots on a barn floor never more than a whisker away. But Yorn has thoughtfully chucked in some electronic wheezes, bloops and irregular rhythms to stop things veering too far into genre pastiche.

Johansson sounds her most seductive on I Don’t Know What To Do; but she’s singing for the listener, not for Pete, and the chemistry is strictly a C.

Yorn didn’t think Break Up was worth releasing, apparently, but was persuaded by friends, and it’s really not terrible. Track five, Blackie’s Dead (you can stop listening after this) is really quite good. It has backbone, bouncy tempo and the aloof threat of doomed guitars, with Yorn’s wispy delivery beefed up to a reedy cough. It’s like a decent stab at a Lemonheads song with Sophie Ellis Bextor on guest vocals and maracas. And it’s a strong reminder that there is talent beneath Yorn’s tortured dreamboat exterior.

Last year, Johansson released her first album, Anywhere I Lay My Head, to a decent level of critical acclaim. It added a pleasing feminine touch to the songs of righteous old drone Tom Waits. And she actually makes this record better than it would have been without her. Thinking about it, Johansson would make an excellent Sugababe. She’s got the sandpaper on velvet voice and that disinterested thing down to a tee. ­Listen to Clean and try to ­imagine Mutya and Keisha coming in on the chorus, and it could be a middling track off their first album.