Actress Scarlett Johansson has recently embarked on her solo career as a musician. No stranger to the microphone, Johansson had a stylish karaoke scene in Lost in Translation where she sang Roxy Music’s “More Than This,” and she joined the Jesus and Mary Chain on their reunion show at the Cochella Music Festival in 2007.

Her debut album, “Anywhere I Lay My Head,” is a yearning voyage composed entirely of Tom Waits covers (bar the one original song, “Song for Jo”). The soundscape is dramatic and slightly on the melancholy side, with a definite influence from shoegazing and post-rock like My Bloody Valentine.

The album is an ambitious project with a bundle of talented artists involved. Dave Sitek from TV on the Radio produced it, and Nick Zinner from the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s plays the guitar. Their involvement cannot be understated, and it much through Johansson’s wisdom of working with the right people, singing the right songs, that makes the record so good.

Thanks to Sitek’s contacts, they have even managed to get David Bowie to do backup vocals on two of the songs. There is little surprise that those particular tracks -“Falling Down” and “Fannin Street” – are two of the strongest of the album.

The opening title track, “Anywhere I Lay My Head” sets the tone for the album with its eclectic mix of direct melodies and ambience.

“Falling Down” is a dreamy journey that is simultaneously baroque and electric. This is much thanks to the novel idea of including a banjo and a delicate piano behind the ambient distortion. Bowie’s voice helps steer the song in the right direction, and lends the vocals more weight than Scarlett’s young and husky voice would have managed alone.

“Song for Jo,” written by Johansson and Sitko, is a sensuous and salty campfire ballad and perhaps proof that Johansson could have stood a little bit more on her own legs and included some more original songs.

“I Don’t Want to Grow Up” is a nice change of pace, an upbeat guitar barrage over a steaming drum machine softened up by otherworldly keys.

Despite that “Anywhere I Lay My Head” concludes the old adage that a good song is a good song, be prepared for a polarizing effect when Rhino releases the album on May 20.

The covers have been compiled from the albums “Alice,” “Swordfishtrombones,” “Big time,” “Rain Dogs,” “Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards,” “Real Gone,” “Small Change,” and “Bone Machine.”