Rilo Kiley

One Liner: Reunion show for a seminal indie rock band featuring Jenny Lewis
Wikipedia Genre: indie rock, indie pop
Home: L.A.

Poster Position: First Quarter - Line 3
Day: Friday
Weekend Two Only (booooooo).

Thoughts:  This is one of those bands that I have always heard the name of, but have never really given any sort of time.  I have yet to even start playing their songs, and none of them look familiar by the title.  I know that Jenny Lewis was in this band, because she has been to ACL twice and I think she is pretty great on her own.  But I am sort of excited to hear what this band is all about.

For some reason, in my mind, I have conflated them with Sleater Kinney.  I guess female singer and late nineties rock and roll vibe.  But I think this is significantly better than my opinion of SK.  The band came together in 1998, and their first album was released in 1999.  In 2000, Lewis and Blake Sennett (lead guitarist, but also as a supporting role actor in Salute Your Shorts and Boy Meets World) acted as fictionalized versions of themselves on an ABC drama.  Which is kind of funny.  Their first few albums weren't necessarily ignored, but 2004 saw their notoriety increase as Lewis appeared on the Postal Service's album Give Up, while Sennett and drummer Jason Boesel's side-band The Elected released a new album.  So, their 2004 album More Adventurous popped into the charts, they scored some cherry late-night appearances, and they got to open for Conor Oberst and Coldplay. 

However, by 2010, the drummer said that there was no more new music coming, and they were on a break.  Sennett's quote, in 2011, was "I would say that if Rilo Kiley were ... hmmm ... a human being ... hmmm ... he's probably laying on his back in a morgue with a tag on his toe. Now, I see movies where the dead get up and walk. And when they do that, rarely do good things happen."  In the decade and a half since, some of them have collaborated here and there, but it is only just now that the announced a reunion and a new tour.  No new music that I see though.

1999's eponymous debut is kind of jenky at times, feels like an unserious lark that they threw out there to see what happened.  You know the music from Napoleon Dynamite?  Sometimes I think of that as I listen.  But other songs flash with harmonic rock that is appealing.  And Lewis's voice is always welcome to me.  Low stream count too.

2001's Take Offs and Landings gets a little more put together, and 2002's The Execution of All Things sticks with that same sort of sound.  As I listened through these, I couldn't really tell the difference between those two albums.  Not that they aren't good, just that they seem like two sides of the same rock and roll coin.  A little smidge of grunge smeared on the otherwise indie rock sound, but I am enjoying it.  But, two of the songs on the 2002 disc are #3 and #4 for stream count, so let's take a listen to "A Better Son/Daughter" with 15.4 million streams.

It's alright.  Sort of disjointed and plodding.  I think the lyrics are good, but the song doesn't get me excited for more of the band.  I swear there are better things in the discography.  "Paint's Peeling," for example, from the same disc.  Or the sing-a-long, kiddie piano bopper of "With Arms Outstretched."  Or the title track.  Weird what catches on sometimes.

The band's name has multiple origin stories, but I don't see which, if any, are legitimate.  Here are the three on Wikipedia: 

"On the syndicated radio show Loveline in August 2005, Sennett explained that he had a dream in which a sports almanac was chasing him: "When it got me, I leafed through it...and I came upon an Australian rules football player from the 19th century named Rilo Kiley. It's kind of embarrassing." When asked by co-host Drew Pinsky if he had ever seen this name in reality, Sennett said, "I don't think so, I don't think that character exists...If you Google 'Rilo Kiley, ' you will just come back with a lot of pictures of us." ...

In 2005, Sennett told the teletext magazine Planet Sound that the name came from a Scottish athlete. On a 2005 episode of the MSNBC entertainment show MSNBC Entertainment Hot List, the female host stated that the name came from "old Scottish sports almanacs." In the following interview segment, Sennett stated, "We just looked in there, and the name of one of the star players from the turn of the century was Rilo Kiley."  In an interview published in Q magazine in September 2007, Sennett stated that Rilo Kiley is named after a character he'd met in a dream who had predicted the date of Jenny Lewis' death."

Mmmmmmmmkay!  Next is that 2004 hit album, which has their second-biggest streamer.  "It's a Hit" is also a good tune, but "Portions for Foxes" is the big one with 24.7 million streams.

Good rock and roll blast right there, along with some bad-girl-sexiness.  I said this during one of my previews for Jenny Lewis by herself, but do you remember that show The League?  It was pretty solid - based generally on a fantasy football league, but also with a lot of other funny bits and relational gags between a group of longtime friends who messed with each other constantly.  Anyway, Lewis looks kind of like the main female lead in that show - Katie Aselton.  This album is pretty reliably good.  I am having fun digging in to this stuff.

Their last real album is also their most radical departure from the prior sound.  I don't know if this is what broke them up, but 2007's Under the Blacklight is significantly more pop-forward, almost with an eighties tinge to it.  Their top streamer is the first on this, and you could convince me that it was a New Pornographers or HAIM or maybe even Lake Street Dive track.  "Silver Lining" has 37.9 million streams.

It honestly now sounds like Jenny Lewis's solo stuff.  Her stuff is definitely brighter than those early RK albums, so maybe the issue here is that she just took over the band and made it in her own image, leading the bros to get mad and bolt.  Now they need some cashola and are back on the Jenny Train!

I am really pleased to dig this stuff.  I won't see the show, being that it is weekend two only, but proper, seminal indie rock goodness is welcome in this house.