She & Him's third album Volume 3 (2013) may have been the first album produced after Deschanel’s divorce from Death Cab For Cutie’s Ben Gibbard in 2011, but it doesn't fit the mould of a typical 'break up album'. A song like "I Could've Been Your Girl" laments the death of all the brilliant possibilities that could have been realised if the lyrical persona's relationship survived, but its lyrics are too general to seem autobiographical or confessional, too forward-looking to bother to excavate all the inner turmoil caused by a shattering breakup.
Deschanel and M. Ward's sonic template is unabashedly old-school, clearly drawing inspiration from 1960s girl groups, where lyrics like "Cause I could've been your girl/ And you could have been/ My four-leaf clover' would not seem out of place at all. With her distinctively deep voice, Deschanel spouts lines that simply describe emotional devastation without really evoking it:
'It doesn't matter, I fought my heartIt broke and shattered to a million and oneUndone, I guess I haven't won'
The point, of course, is that there's no point crying over spilt milk - Deschanel's lyrical persona is ready to pick up the pieces, place them in a nice box, and move on with life. As Consequence of Sound's Dale W. Eisinger notes, Deschanel and Ward aren't interested in emotional stasis or playing destructive blame games in Volume 3: "It doesn’t inspire sadness or regret or much introspection at all. Instead, the overriding feeling is that tomorrow will always be a better day — that’s totally fine".
The lyrics may be melancholic, but Ward's strings and guitars are sunny: She & Him's harmonic melodies insist on being energetic and infectious. You've been bruised by love, but so what? Tomorrow is only a day away, and there's no way you can 'do it over' without a time machine anyway.
