Pete Yorn recorded Break Up in 2006 on the heels of one, but it sat on the shelf until 2009, appearing just a matter of months after Back & Fourth, and a year after his duet partner, Scarlett Johannson, cast as Brigitte Bardot to Yorn's Serge Gainsbourg, made an awkwardly arty splash with a Tom Waits' cover album, but the album that really casts a shadow over this is Vol.

1, the 2008 record by She & Him, the teaming of M.

Ward and Zooey Deschanel.

Yorn and Johannson cut their album long before She & Him, but surfacing in its wake, they can't help but seem a bit like the polished, polite answer to the twee, precious charms of Zooey & M.

Ward.

Break Up does trump Vol.

1 conceptually, chronicling the dissolution of a romance as a series of duets, and Scarlett is a more-than-worthy foil to Yorn.

If anything, her hushed, husky voice -- showcased better here than on her own debut -- is a greater presence than his self-pity.

In this tasteful context, it's easy to hear why he pines after her but not so clear what she ever saw in him in the first place.