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?