September 27, 2007
It's a Hit, Mostly: Rilo Kiley @ 9:30
Say you’re part of that very vocal contingent that is unmoved by, or else just plain hates, Under the Blacklight, the heavily Fleetwood Mac-ified new album from L.A. indie-twangers Rilo Kiley. Maybe you were afraid that the rapturous reception to Rabbit Fur Coat, frontwoman and chief songwriter Jenny Lewis’s solo disc from last year, would spell the end of the band. Or else that Blacklight -- with its not-always-convincing depiction of sexual perversity in Los Angeles, not-always-appropriate melodic sunshine, and a measly two songwriting credits for demoted former co-bandleader Blake Sennett -- would spell the end of the band as we knew it.
Well, take comfort, doomsayers and Blacklight-skeptics: Rilo Kiley’s soulful-if-unexceptional set at the 9:30 Club last night, the first of a sold-out two-night stand, was aimed squarely at you. The 17-song set featured almost as many tunes from 2004’s More Adventurous as from the new record (six and seven, respectively; rock 'n' roll baseball statisticians unite!), and generally kept the Jenny-worship from overwhelming any sense of the band’s chops, which are, for better and worse, more polished than ever. It was Sennett who greeted us after the opening “It’s a Hit,” and who handled most of the song introductions and banter. The cheers that greeted the opening chords of older tunes like “Portions for Foxes” or “I Never” showed that crowd was reacting to something other than just Jenny’s luminous, irreducible Jenny-ness.
Make no mistake, though: Despite the fact that band didn't fall to pieces during the brief moments when she left the stage (that Sennett-Pierre de Reeder dual-mandolin version of “Ripchord” was actually quite lovely), Lewis is what makes this band special. Her pipes can sound as coy or as wholesome as she wants to make ‘em, and her beauty is of the 90th-percentile sort that paradoxically makes her even sexier because unlike, say, Beyoncé, she actually looks like she sometimes sweats and stuff. She’s the girl next door! If the girl next door was a child actor in forgettable 80s sitcoms and then 15 year later turned into a remarkable singer and songwriter.
Dressed in what looked like a leotard with gold-lamé trim (echoing the gold lamé curtain hung behind the stage) and sparkly tights, Lewis alternated between guitar, keyboards, and bass. For “Breakin’ Up,” a disco-accented, maddeningly catchy number with a chorus (“Oooooh! Yeah! It’s good to be free!”) that sounds like it’s due to be licensed for shampoo ad any second now, she broke out the cowbell. (Oh, to be that cowbell.) She stepped back to serve merely as the bass player on the ethereal “Dreamworld,” Blacklight's only Sennett-sans-Lewis track. The band performed it, uh, under a blacklight, casting the white dress shirts worn by Sennett and de Reeder a fluorescent purple.
It was the late-in-the-set arrival of “15” –- the new record’s ode to statutory rape a la Rod Stewart’s “Tonight’s the Night” –- that finally warranted a “good evening” from Lewis, who asked if there were any 15-year-olds in the audience, surely to the delight of 9:30 Club management. The song warded off some stiff competition to emerge as one of Lewis’ strongest performances of the evening, and when the audience applauded it with gusto, she scolded us, “You dirty dogs!” Then came “Rise Up with Fists!!” the set’s only selection from Rabbit Fur Coat, (“a cover song,” in Sennett’s wry introduction) pimped out with a rubbery, more rhythmic arrangement. For the set-closing “Spectacular Views,” Lewis ducked beneath the keyboard –- she spent a lot of time down there, puzzlingly –- leaving Sennet, de Reeder, and Jason Boesel to complete the skyscraping tune as a power-trio rave up.
The show had glamor, humor, mystery, and plenty of sex. It lacked only spontaneity, never quite managing to shake the sense of a now-fully-mature band working dutifully through a setlist. "I was your silver lining, but now I'm gold," Lewis sings on the new album, celebratory and defiant. Some folks prefer silver, of course. Last night's show suggested that Rilo Kiley's old fans and the new ones Under the Blacklight seems calculated to bring in can peacefully coexist.
Setlist
It's a Hit
Close Call
Portions for Foxes
Paint's Peeling
Breakin' Up
Dreamworld
The Moneymaker
Ripchord
A Man/Me/Then Jim
Silver Lining
I Never
15
Rise Up with Fists!!
Spectacular Views
Encore
Give a Little Love
Does He Love You?
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I saw them in Boston the other night, and I'll agree that while they were technically excellent, it wasn't the most passionate show. This was the third time I've seen them, I believe the last time was at 9:30 a year or two ago, and it was awesome. Of course, it helped that Conor Oberst and M.Ward came out for the encore.
I've found that the more you listen to Under the Blacklight the better it gets. I was thoroughly unimpressed the first and second times, but it quickly grew on me. That said, "Dejalo" is the worst fucking song they've ever recorded.
And they didn't play Give a Little Love at my encore! Damn, I really like that song.
I saw them two or three years ago at Black Cat. While that show was plagued by kind of cruddy sound(which is pretty much the nature of Black Cat), at least the people in 2005 acted like they were excited to see Rilo Kiley.
Everyone at 9:30 last night looked like they were more excited to have scored tickets because of how highly it reflected on their connections. There was almost no crowd excitement. No one dancing around, no one obviously thrilled because they had listened to CDs 50 times a week for the last 12 months and now they were finally seeing the band live. And it affected the set (in my opinion - they didn't seem into it onstage either).
Also, in 2005, there were far fewer people talking throughout the show.
I know not every show can be as exciting as another, but this was pretty disappointing. I felt like I ended up attending someone else's status symbol.
Finally, if you as the band have to haul out balloons to throw into the audience to get crowd energy up, something is going wrong.
Thursday night at the 9:30 may have been a bit different from what you guys describe from Wednesday.
The crowd seemed very, very happy with the band's 90 minute performance. Blake Sennett sounded great. The balloons were distracting/annoying, but whatever.
All in all, they came across as total pros. Not 100% my type of music (maybe 85% was in my range), but it would have been hard to walk away from there without thinking that this is something I was supposed to see. Jenny and Rilo Kiley generally are sorta important to music today and the last few years IMHO.
I should add that the crowd was WAAAAAY better than the crowd at the Ben Gibbard/Jonathon Rice shows a few months back. Hopefully they can give a good report back lest Ben and/or Jonathon were dissuaded from ever contemplating a return.
I have to agree with those who said the Thursday show seemed better than the reports of the Wednesday show. I was there on Thursday with a friend who is moderate RK fan, an he commented he'd never seen a band feed on the crowd energy like RK did last night. And the new album sounds better live than it does on disc. It is not my fave by them for sure, but hearing it live redeemed it for me.
Jim said: Everyone at 9:30 last night looked like they were more excited to have scored tickets because of how highly it reflected on their connections.
___________
this is an odd comment. i didn't get my tickets through any connections... unless you count tickets.com as a "connection". how does one look around and ascertain that the crowd is comprised of insufficient numbers of "legitimate" fans than you deem appropriate and that they "scored" their tickets through less-than-worthy (again, as deemed worthy by you) means?
You know, as I wrote that, I half-wondered how long it would take before someone took it as a personal attack.
I don't care how anyone actually got their tickets; and I didn't say a single goddamn thing about the authenticity of the fans. I didn't say someone was a poser or that Rilo Kiley sold out, or anything of the sort.
I mean there was a certain smug lifelessness to the audience. People looked like they were at the concert because they were aware of Rilo Kiley's importance as a band, and wanted to be able to tell someone they went to see such an important band - much as, when I was in middle school, some classmates bragged about going to see the "Steel Wheels" tour, because they had seen the Rolling Stones live!!!*
As to the "connections" comment - sure, you and I bought our tickets online. But this was a sold out show - and given recent ticket sales for New Pornographers and others, it was pretty much guaranteed to come close to, if not actually, sell out. I just meant a few people at the concert acted a lot less like they were pleased to have spent their money on a concert ticket, and more like they were pleased to see and be seen at a sold out show.
Yeah, it is "deemed by me" because this is a comment section on a web site, where people are free to express their opinion. You can sniff about other people's opinions here too, but it doesn't make your observations any more or less legitimate than mine.
Finally, if you're upset because you were one of the people standing around chattering during the concert my wife and I were trying to watch, and you suspect that you're the object of my scorn, then you're right, and I wish you would have shut up. But if you're not one of those people, and you harbor no such suspicions, then go on your way with my good wishes.
*Disclaimer: I am not representing that this Rilo Kiley tour was in any other way comparable to the Steel Wheels tour.
>>People looked like they were at the concert because they were aware of Rilo Kiley's importance as a band, and wanted to be able to tell someone they went to see such an important band - much as, when I was in middle school, some classmates bragged about going to see the "Steel Wheels" tour, because they had seen the Rolling Stones live!!!*
Man, I wanted to agree with everything you said, but you had to throw in the clause about "because they were aware of Rilo Kiley's importance as a band". Why in the world is this in any way wrong in your view?
Do I have to love, love, love the band? Am I supposed to limit myself only to shows of the acts I like/love most? How many? Top 3? Top 5?
Rilo Kiley was in my top 6 acts to see (not seen before), yet, I cannot sing along to every one of their songs. Yes, I recognize how important they, as an act, are (and yeah, particularly Jenny). I like them. I've seen more than 60 bands this year at more than 25 shows. Is it wrong that I'm not a fanatic about most of them? Frankly, this clause is absolutely absurd in that it carries your post to an extreme where it is fairly clear you did not intend to go.
That is, other than that clause, I agree with you. People standing around chattering are the absolute WORST part of attending most any show at the 9:30 Club. I've confronted people about it. Its usually the kids right around 20-25. And I wish the crowd as a whole, or the acts (particularly the quieter ones like Ben Gibbard was), would tell these particular people to shut the hell up or go outside if they weren't there to see and hear the act.
Honestly, these are the people I think you are complaining about, and these are the people I complain about.
There really wasn't too much of that on Thursday night. But, than again, I've sort of learned to move towards the front of the audience at the 9:30 Club if you don't want to be around these people. The same tends to hold true though at most other venues, and for many, many acts.
Well, honestly, fuck you.
You don't have to be history's biggest fan to go to a concert. Shit, commerce is commerce, and I can't stand in its way.
But if you want me to pat you on the back because you "are aware of their importance" and therefore buy concert tickets, well tought shit. I looked around me on Wednesday night, and I saw people who couldn't have told the difference if the fucking James Gang got onstage and played Lee Dorsey covers. It wasn't just "not knowing songs by heart" - it was recognizing the most recent album and standing in mute ignorance of anything else.
If you think I should be all-fired happy about that, well tough.
Wow, you must be the toughest internet tough guy ever, tough guy! I bow in worship.
Look idiot, if being "aware of their importance" is bad in itself, than please say that so everyone here can see you for the jackass that you obviously are to me now.
If its bad in combination with something else, than say how the "aware of their importance" thing in any way makes it worse than the something else by itself.
But you threw that in, and than gave examples of actual bad behavior that would seem to have nothing to do with whether any particular fan is "aware of their importance".
Put another way, are you "aware of their importance"?
If so, how do I separate you from whoever the hell you are complaining about, and what in the world does someone (like you) being "aware of their importance" have to do with whatever you are complaining about?
Face it pal, bad behavior is bad behavior. Whatever else you are talking about is so much mumbo jumbo, and makes you sound stupid.