2004: Rilo Kiley - More Adventurous

I've had a tricky run on the last few posts. The albums selected were mainly not instantly familiar to me - I needed to give them a good listen and develop a line of thought on them. It was a pleasure, but it didn't always come easily. From here to the end, they're almost entirely albums which are identifiably part of my taste, which I've listened to many many times and still do today. Not entirely - I've still set myself one or two challenges to come, but mainly.

This, 'More Adventurous' by Rilo Kiley, if you know me, you'll know this is an album I like. I spent a lot of time trying to persuade other people it was the best thing since  ... [tried to think of a band which sounded vaguely like "Sliced Bread". Couldn't] Sliced Bread [who I'm now going to pretend were an obscure tuneful early 90s American female-fronted indie rock band], you know, Sliced Bread, they were great weren't they?   So influential. That works on two levels. How serendipitous.

Responses were mixed. Well, no, not that mixed, often quite uniform, along the lines of "Yes, I really liked it,  but, I don't know, it began to bother me after a while. It's good, but ...". Arguably, the response in the music press was similar - I remember it coming out to a spurt of glowing reviews, but it was nowhere to be seen in the End of Year Polls for 2005.

Just to be clear, it was released in the US in late 2004, in the UK, in very early 2005. It was the first Rilo Kiley album I bought, though I'd heard one or two songs before, and I was first listened to it, oddly, on my headphones in my flat while watching a Six Nations Rugby Match. As the album went on, I realised I was concentrating more on the music than the sport ... the two factors fighting constantly for attention in my life!

So, what's the ambivalence about? About this album, about Rilo Kiley as a whole, a band now defunct and, to be honest, a mere footnote in the history of this thing we call indie pop slash rock with mild country influences.

Does it get annoying? Does she, Jenny Lewis, the frontwoman to Rilo Kiley, get a bit annoying? Is it hard to work out quite what her angle is, whether she's trying too hard to be too clever, both cult and populist, both real and fake, are there too many words, is there too much effort?

There's a story about the recording of 'More Adventurous' which exemplifies this dichotomy, and finding it acceptable or not may be the key to whether you think 'More Adventurous' is a great album or not. There's a song on the album called 'I Never', which is really a torch song, a big country-soul showtune which requires Lewis to sing like Dusty Springfield, like Candi Staton, like the best singer she can possibly be, to carry it off, to stop it tipping over into absurdity. And, arguably, she does manage it. Out of context, it's a fabulous, flawless vocal performance, of a song that was clearly very personal to her. Lovely.
And in interviews surrounding the album's release, she mentioned that in recording the song, to get the performance the song needed, she sang, in the recording studio, naked. Well, ok. I'm sure that's true. But why are you mentioning it in a press interview, like the journalist is your best friend? Maybe because you're so eager to show how real you really are, maybe also because you're kind of aware it's a titillating tidbit for the salivating serious music press. Maybe there's too much that is too knowing here, or maybe it's just a great song.

How does the album hold up in general?  Still really good, though not flawless as i'd once have said. It has that wonderful thing of having its best songs in the middle, though the first three are perhaps the "poppiest". 'Portions for Foxes' was the one that got the airplay, got them a guest slot on 'The OC'. Here again you wonder quite what their game is. As one music journo said, if they'd called it 'Bad News' (as it's hook goes) they could have had a massive hit. Why call it 'Portions for Foxes'? Trying to be dark and clever. The album as a whole has a slightly faux-profound young adult's obsession with growing up, growing old and mortality - this isn't a criticism, it's rather wonderful for the most part.

After the big trio to start, there's a song called 'Ripchord' sung by the band's putative co-leader Blake Sennett. You can tolerate it as a breath of fresh air, but, jeez, his voice is weak. Time taken up on the album with this guy singing is time wasted. I was trying to think of other bands with both a male and female vocalist where it's so obvious they should give all the songs to the woman - Arcade Fire the obvious example, Camera Obscura (who've rectified the error of their first album), but not, actually, Ash (middle period) or Belle and Sebastian.

Sennett and Lewis' past relationship and creative partnership clearly gave the band a significant tension which ultimately led to what appears to have been a pretty acrimonious split.

Her solo career is fairly acclaimed, fairly successful, I personally prefer Rilo Kiley. Above all else, they were a really sharp band. 'More Adventurous' and its predecessor 'The Execution of All Things' are very much their best, and their final album 'Under the Blacklight' is a strange concoction which takes that relationship between "real" and "fake" to a pretty explicit level. The production is very clean, very r'n'b and the subject matter is seedy Californian life and pornography. It's a pretty uneasy listen, with a few good tracks but, none, if you ask me, touching the heights of 'More Adventurous'.

My favourite songs, by the way, the ones I still listen to all the time, are the simplest, least clever, least adorned, 'The Absence of God' and the title track 'More Adventurous' which are just lovely country-tinged rambling ruminations on the trials of young adulthood, full of sweet and saddening lines. That is as good as Rilo Kiley could get, when it was all kept simple.

Here's a Best of, including Jenny Lewis solo albums. I must say, going through the catalogue, there were loads of songs I didn't want to leave off, loads of good ones. I do contend this is one of the most underrated bands of the last 20 years, whatever flaws they may have had.

The Execution of all Things
A Better Son/Daughter
More Adventurous
The Absence of God
The Charging Sky - Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins
I Never
Portions for Foxes
Godspeed - Jenny Lewis
With Arms Outstretched
Rise Up With Fists!!! - Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins
Paint's Peeling
Spectacular Views
Under the Blacklight
Pictures of Success
Breakin' Up
Does He Love You?
Dejalo
Jenny, You're Barely Alive