Adventurous arrangements aside, the simple sensibilities and straightforward poetry of Tom Waits have always been at the core of his appeal. As such, Rain Dogs is the epitome of “grizzled” and it latches onto the heart like a rusted bear trap, particularly the cathartic closer “Anywhere I Lay My Head.” Waits can’t sing, but he sings here, belting out desperately poignant imagery (“My heart is in my shoe”: beautiful) in his instantly recognizable growl.

I point this out because, by the same token, it seems Scarlett Johansson does not possess great vocal range, but rather than utilizing the pipes she was born with, crafting her own distinctive, if flawed, vocal style, she and producer Dave Sitek opt for a different approach, one leaning heavily on filters and studio trickery. Johansson—or Sitek—chooses to bury her voice in a placid sea of synths, reaching for a soulful tone but coming off as sleepy and, worse, even slightly uninterested. It’s pleasant and all, but when the source material is so sparse and deeply visceral, this by comparison feels artificial, as if spawned from the mind of an android. Surely Johansson and Sitek needed to take a slightly different approach, as all good covers are reinterpretations and not reproductions, but this track doesn’t carry near the emotional weight of the original. It’s almost as if it aims for something detached.

It’s probably unfair to compare Johansson to Waits, starlet dabbling in music to a veritable legend, but my frustration with Johansson’s cover is this: if she loves Waits’s material so dearly (I’m not doubting her affection for it; she probably loves it every bit as much as I do), why not attempt to carry on its spirit by singing as nakedly as Waits? Such a startlingly bare approach would have been far more interesting and potentially a lot less lifeless than this lethargic rendition.