Rilo Kiley: All About Jenny
posted by JimAbbott on Oct 3, 2007 2:02:13 AM
Rilo Kiley isn't the new Fleetwood Mac, as Spin magazine suggested on a recent cover, but the poppy songs on the new Under the Blacklight indicate the band is ready for such mainstream comparisons.
In concert before an attentive audience on Tuesday at House of Blues, lead singer Jenny Lewis and her musical partner/ex-romantic foil Blake Sennett mixed a good deal of the new material with older favorites in a 90-minute set.
Lewis, with her long legs and long red bangs, was the focus of the crowd's devotion, with good reason. She delivers a song with almost theatrical style, whether playing guitar, keyboards or prowling the stage as she did in "With Arms Outstretched."
That song, introduced only by Sennett's acoustic guitar, marked her return to the stage after Sennett's solitary, ukulele-powered "Ripchord."
His "unplugged" interlude was a nice contrast to the band, but it also lacked the electricity that radiated when Lewis was onstage. Even Sennett's muddled lead singing in "Dreamworld," the most Fleetwood Mac-ian of the Blacklight songs, was oddly ineffective.
Some of the new songs paled against the urgency of older material such as the opening "It's a Hit" and the exuberant "Portions for Foxes."
By comparison, Blacklight's "Breakin' Up" is overly cute and "The Moneymaker" needed all the strobes that the band used to bolster the beat.
More subtle and expressive was the 30-minute opening set by Art in Manila. Fronted by the ethereal Orenda Fink, the band put out a textured, lovely sound that rocked gently on songs such as "Anything You Love" and "Set the Woods on Fire," the title track of the band's new album.
"Can you hear me through my hair?" Fink asked the crowd, alluding to the bangs that covered half her face. Art in Manila was followed by the three-piece Grand Ole Party, which banged away harder, but less inventively, for 30 minutes of its own.
At its best, Rilo Kiley flexed its own muscles on songs such as the More Adventurous track "A Man/Me/Then Jim" to wring emotion out of intricate narratives.
That doesn't make it the next Fleetwood Mac, but a band with the potential to be something more original.
http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/ent...iley-all-.html