The Voyager

Ever since the masterpiece that was Rabbit Fur Coat, I've been eagerly anticipating the latest from Jenny Lewis. The Voyager is not as good as Rabbit Fur Coat, but it as an engaging, peppy, poppy record that shows off her fine voice and clever rhymes.

The album is pretty upbeat, and from start to finish has clues that indicate Lewis' positive outlook. The opening track, "Head Underwater," says:

"There's a little bit of magic, everybody has it
There's a little bit of sand left in the hourglass"

The closing title track, which is the most ethereal of the collection, posits:

"The Voyager's in every boy and girl
If you wanna get to heaven get out of this world"

I'm not quite sure who or what The Voyager is, but it's in everybody.

The rest of the album consists of pleasant pop tunes. I'm partial to "Late Bloomer," which has a more complex structure and a lyric that is like a short story:

"When I turned 16 I was furious and restless
Got a chancy girl haircut and a plane ticket to Paris
I stayed there with Pansy, he had a studio in the seventh
Lost his lover to a sickness, I slept beside him in his bed
That's when I met Nancy, she was smoking on a gypsy
She had a ring in her nose and her eyes were changing like moonstones
She said "Open up late bloomer, it will make you smile
I can see that fire burning, in you little child."

The same could be said of "Aloha and the Three Johns," which contains this bit of poetry:

"And John's been avidly reading Slash's bio
There was a TV set smashed out in front of his room
I didn't ask, I led a solo charge down to the sea
Where the fast-food trash and tourists made me fear and loath it"

All in all, this is a pretty good record, and even after many spins I wasn't sick of it. It just leaves me longing for something on the level of Rabbit Fur Coat. That's kind of a backhanded compliment, I realize. What a burden for an artist--to make something great and then have everything you do compared to it.