She & Him played Friday on SXSW, and Pitchfork has posted a couple of pictures and talked about their performance.

Certainly one of the fest’s hottest tickets, She & Him’s Parish appearance commanded a SXSW badge-holder queue that stretched on for a block, one in which I waited for the better part of an hour to gain admittance (sorry, Shout Out Louds, I tried!). Understandable, really: M. Ward, the “Him” half, would be a pretty huge draw by himself, and toss in the novelty of seeing actress Zooey Deschanel in the flesh and just a few feet away [/starstruck] and you’ve got yourself a capital E Event. Volume One, She & Him’s debut, is an interesting artifact; while only two of the songs are covers, pretty much every track on it sounds like something you’ll swear you’ve heard before. That may be a testament to Deschanel’s skill with classicist songwriting, or that may be a testament to one of the chief talents of any actor: imitation. Perhaps both. Either way, those songs still felt eerily familiar when Deschanel and Ward played them at Parish, joined by a three-piece backing band that included Bright Eyes/the Good Life bassist Stefanie Drootin. Zooey mostly sang and tapped tambourine, though she also played a mean Rhodes (as on “Sentimental Heart”) and even did the kazoo thing with her mouth on “This Is Not a Test”.

Deschanel, as it turns out, is an extremely capable performer, though perhaps not (yet) a comfortable one. I had a difficult time getting an emotional read on her here; she seemed to hover between vague bemusement (”I like those lamps,” she remarked at one point, gesturing toward some illuminated spheres in the club) and mild annoyance. (Ward, meanwhile, was strictly wingman, ceding the spotlight the whole while to She.) Until the novelty factor wears off and folks’ attentions shift from Deschanel to Deschanel’s songs, however, a degree of awkward disconnect will probably remain a given at She & Him live shows. Hopefully this happens sooner rather than later; each live show is, after all, a one-take affair.

The pictures were added to the gallery.