Under the Blacklight

I liked Jenny Lewis' album Rabbit Fur Coat so much I was interested to get the latest Rilo Kiley album. Lewis is the lead singer and major songwriter for this band, composing ten of the eleven songs and singing lead on the same number. While not as strong as Rabbit Fur Coat, this is an enjoyable disc of music.

Lewis seems to have sex on the mind, or at least a kind of illicit sex that is not all hearts and flowers. The album design includes photos taken at a strip club, and the first video was for a song called The Moneymaker, and featured porn stars. Another song, Close Call, contains the line: "Funny thing about money for sex, you might get rich but you die of it." Another song, appropriately called 15, would send a shiver of fear through any man on the prowl: "She was bruised as a cherry, ripe as a peach, how could he have known she was only fifteen?"

Musically, Rilo Kiley fit comfortable in the label known as alt-country. Lewis has a fine, down-home voice (I said last week that Neko Case was my favorite female vocalist, but Lewis is right there) and many of the songs are old-time country with just a hint of rock and roll. This is especially true of Breakin' Up, The Angels Hung Around, and Silver Lining. They also do a kind of Tex-Mex number called Dejalo, which doesn't quite work, and a throwback to the seventies with Give a Little Love, which is a title that really shouldn't be used anymore. The best songs are the ones that are almost like little short stories, which include 15 and Smoke Detector, about the perils of smoking in bed.