Johansson lends cachet but no chemistry to ‘Break Up’

He got to thinking - who’s the modern-day Bardot, which is to say who’s sexy and sly and more talented as an actress?

Enter Scarlett Johansson, fascinated by the left-field invitation, and three years later their album, “Break Up,’’ is finally being released today.

The unlikely pairing is full of promise, but there’s a fatal hurdle: “Break Up’’ tries so hard - with cloyingly upbeat melodies, overstuffed production, and thread-thin lyricism - it ends up missing the mark by a mile.

Johansson, sounding like she parachuted into these songs during the final recording sessions (which, according to the press release, she sort of did), evinces a congenial presence, but she’s not equipped to pull off the kind of sunny pop record Yorn had in mind.

For starters, her voice isn‘t suited to the material. Pleasant enough, her vocals here are too languid and submerged in layers of reverb and effects that mask any notion of how she actually sings. Her voice made more sense on last year’s “Anywhere I Lay My Head,’’ Johansson’s tribute album to Tom Waits, because her disembodied singing was as foreboding as the songs.

On “Break Up,’’ Johansson is glaringly out of her league, but it’s not entirely her fault. If Yorn had written stronger songs, maybe she could have stretched out on them. Instead, she’s relegated to singing flat choruses on “I Don’t Know What to Do’’ and “Shampoo.’’

Sunny Levine’s heavy-handed production doesn’t help, either. Not content to let a single melody bubble to the surface, Levine piles up the instrumentation (a banjo here, a synth there) to the point of no return.

Their cover of “I Am the Cosmos,’’ a beloved song by Big Star’s Chris Bell, will no doubt sound sacrilegious to indie-rock fans, with Johansson singing with the detached emotion of a satellite adrift in space.

“Break Up’’ will surely remind some listeners of last year’s odd couple, She & Him, the far-superior pairing of actress Zooey Deschanel and indie-rocker M. Ward. But Johansson and Yorn don’t exude that kind of chemistry; in fact, they often sound completely at odds.

Only on “Relator,’’ the shiny first single that bops and bounces like a beach ball in July, do they sound like they’re in sync. Otherwise, “Break Up’’ is a harsh reminder that just because something comes to you in a dream doesn’t make it that.