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.
