Another Form of Relief

If you’re as big of a Rilo Kiley nerd as I am, you may have wondered in the past who the mysterious ‘Morgan’ is that’s mentioned on Papillon and The Absence of God. The answer is none other than Morgan Nagler, lead singer of The Whispertown 2000. I’ve been aware of the band for a few years now, but never paid them a great deal of attention. They do however present an interesting case of just how far can a band go purely on a tenuous connection to an already successful band?

All of which is probably a little unfair. The Whispertown 2000 aren’t a bad band by any means. Their songs are decent enough, and I don’t think anyone would find them all that objectionable. The problem is that they aren’t that great either. Maybe they have that breakthrough indie hit in them (you know, the one that’ll turn up on Gossip Girl or 90210), but at the moment it’s all rather uneventful.

I have no idea when the ‘The’ was added to the name, but it really doesn’t work.

Two and a half years after her first solo album with one crapfest Rilo Kiley album last year and it’s time for the second proper Jenny Lewis record. I was getting ready to hail this as a great return to form, because it really is rather good, but then I discovered this song actually dates back two years itself. Which makes it kind of strange as the lead for a new album, but it’s good enough to not matter too much.

Obviously we’re back to the country/folk/gospel territory here, which is obviously what Lewis is interested in doing now as opposed to the shiny pop of her band. Her voice is perfectly suited to the songs of heartbreak that come with the genre, and when she sings about how rough giving up drugs and cigarettes was, she’s world weary enough that you believe it. I have no idea if the rest of the album will sound as good, but this song is certainly good enough to restore at least some hope.

I’ve posted both Rilo Kiley and The Elected in the past month, so it only seems fair to complete the set. I was kind of torn on Jenny Lewis’ record when it came out. While enjoying it, I didn’t really think that much of it simply because it didn’t sound like Rilo Kiley. It’s strange that a couple of years and one horrendous album later, that actually doesn’t seem like a negative anymore.

Melt Your Heart feels like it would be right at home in a smoke-filled bar, it’s lone singer on the stage lamenting about failed loves while no one really pays her any attention. It’s obvious that it’s this material where Lewis’ passions now lie. Still, as long as there is money to be made in songs about porn stars and doing fifteen year olds, I guess we’ll be waiting a while for anything new.

What does it say when a side project band is putting out better records than the band that initially spawned it? Is it fair to even call it a side project at that point? Both fair questions when looking at The Elected, who have grown greatly from “that little band with the one from Rilo Kiley who isn’t Jenny Lewis”. Two albums in and Blake Sennett has mastered his “Elliot Smith in front of a band” routine down to a perfect art. He’s just made it slightly less depressing.

Back When They Were Good is a depressingly long series of once great bands that have gone down the shitter.

now Throwaway pop that relies far too much on the sex appeal of Jenny Lewis.

then Hey kids, look! It’s something called subtlety. You see, back in the olden days, Rilo Kiley had better things in them than inane pap about porn stars, smoking, and whatever the hell else that last album was going on about. Take Science vs Romance for example. You could probably pull a few meanings out of it and never really settle on a definitive answer. To me it’s a song about someone moving past their reliance on religion and switching to rationality. To you, who knows? Ambiguity is a good thing. As are songs longer than three minutes. It wasn’t a crime to put out a song that ran six minutes back in 2001. If only the same could be said now.

Let’s just put this whole silly mess behind us.

Homecoming is the story of an English guy and an American girl, and the way they each view their relationship. Neither of these characters are likeable. He comes across as a dick (”I fuck my American cunt“) while she proves to be so vacuous (thinking he’s the perfect guy – “I love my English romance“) that she wouldn’t be out of place in Nada Surf’s Popular. I reference that song largely because this song covers much the same ground in both style and endorsing the lifestyle of the terminally stupid. It’s all lo-fi guitar and vocals that alternate between the subdued and the sweet. Without knowing what the song was about in the first place, you could easily listen to it and not even realise the darker undertones.

The first track from Under the Blacklight manages to set the bar a bit too high for the rest of it, aiding in the crushing disappointment that follows. No matter though, Silver Lining remains one of the finest Rilo songs in years, a joy in it’s simplicity and “hooray hooray” choruses. So good that one could almost believe it was held over from a previous album.

Quite possibly the finest song ever concerning Sodom and Gomorrah. Probably the only song concerning Sodom and Gomorrah.

I struggled with the first proper Los Campesinos! singles (this and We Throw Parties, You Throw Knives) because they just sounded wrong at first. Covered in distortion, overproduced, seemingly losing some of the joy of the original recordings. I kept listening to them though and they soon became staples on my playlists. Don’t Tell Me To Do The Math(s), over the course of the year, wormed it’s way into my favourite song list. I don’t really know how, but now it’s hard to listen to it without shouting out the words as loud as possible at the same time. And if that isn’t the mark of a great song, I don’t know what is.

Just close your eyes and listen to this song. Immerse yourself in it, take in every word. That should be more than enough to justify it’s place here.

Few bands have the kind of energy that Johnny Foreigner seem to bring to every song. Champagne Girls I Have Known is a noisy, confusing mess, with multiple vocals, guitars and drums all trying to be louder than each other. In other words, a glorious assault on the eardrums.

I’ll Kill Her is one of the those rare songs that will just sit on repeat for long periods at at time. SoKo Girl starts gently enough: she’s talking about how the guy she likes didn’t call her to go on their date. So far, so mundane. This evolves into anger as the song goes on about the “bitch” that is now in her place, through the eventual announcement that makes up the title of the song. The interesting part here though is that the narrator seems entirely unstable. It may all be as literal as it sounds on the initial listen, or it could be so much more. Even people bitter about a breakup don’t usually launch into detailed “what ifs” about the children they would have had (even naming them Tom and Susan). At the very least, this girl has some kind of issues. Listen again though, and you start to wonder if there was even a breakup involved. She never mentions one directly. For all we know, she has never even met the guy she’s bitter about losing to someone else. This could just be the most elaborate stalker scenario put to record. It doesn’t really matter exactly which scenario it is though. At the very least, it’s a fascinating stream of consciousness of a somewhat damaged person. It’s sung in such an informal (almost conversational) tone that it’s impossible to dislike her, no matter how crazy it may come across as at times.

I’ve been trying to write the blurb for this song for the last couple of days with little success. Which is a bit odd considering it’s my number one song of last year. I’ve listened to it repeatedly trying to pull some inspiration from it with no luck. Which isn’t a slight against the song itself. I adore it, probably more now than when I started listening to it last year. I just can’t seem to explain it in words. Sure, it has all of the hallmarks of what I like in music: vaguely twee, fragile yet amusing lyrics, even a trumpet. Yet I can’t seem to locate that “wow” factor which tips it over the top. Maybe, to it’s eternal credit, it doesn’t need one.

And.. stop.

Yeah yeah.

Arriving from the ashes of the mighty Nosferatu D2 is Superman Revenage Squad, a one man stream of consciousness tour de force. The music doesn’t really matter because it’s all about the words. Which is for the best, because as Idiot Food is disjointed at best. The song is littered with entire sections that go wandering off on separate tangents and leave the music behind. But it doesn’t really matter as you’ll usually find yourself nodding in agreement with everything he’s saying.

I woke up feeling like a new person, unfortunately he was much worse than the one I used to be

A fine slice of upbeat melancholy from Sweden’s ambassadors of loserpop (I will make this a genre if it’s the last thing I do).

Rock bands fronted by girls with aggressive vocals seem to be in favour at the moment, but who are we to argue when the results are as good as Australia’s Operator Please? Seemingly a rallying cry against popularity, all of the crucial boxes are ticked, from shouty-to-gentle vocals, music that goes all over the place, as well as the obligatory occasional fuck.

If any band can put as much of a smile on my face as Tullycraft can, I haven’t heard them yet. Probably the best kept secret within the indie pop scene (this is their 13th year and they still seem to be obscure), last year saw the release of their fifth album, Every Scene Needs A Center. The whole thing is loaded with excellent pop songs, but few come close to the pure joy of If You Take Away The Make-Up.., with it’s handclaps, gentle vocals and to the point two minute running time.

Coming across as a sort of 2007 version of The Futureheads (only, you know, good), Assembly Now don’t seem to have quite nailed their final sound yet, but it’s fun listening to them mess around while they try. Leigh-On-Sea perfects the all over the place vocals and guitar rhythms that initially worked so well for the aforementioned band. Assuming they keep on doing what they’re doing and finally settle on a sound that is just a tiny bit more original, these guys have the potential to be something very special.

It was the always great Nothing But Green Lights that first put me onto The Bridge Gang, and thanks to my ever excellent timing, they had already broken up by the time I started listening. It still amazes me that great bands can fly entirely under your radar for years without you ever being aware they exist. Oh well, late or not, London Sky Tonight is a perfect rock single – rough, ready and deceptively simple.

One of only two songs from Under The Blacklight that I still quite like a few months later, Dreamworld is far, far too good to have anything to do with that album. The only Blake effort within an increasingly Jenny-centric band, it has all of the subtlty and depth that the rest of the album seems to lack. Just listen to the wonderful guitar work and take in the oh so softly vocals. I have no idea what it’s about, and honestly I can’t say that I care. It’s all about the sound.

Just when I think Two Gallants are destined to be a band where I appreciate a few songs but never really love any of them, along comes a song like this and completely blows me away. This song alone has rocketed the band to the top of my ever expanding “bands I should check out in more detail when I have the time” list. If they have just one more song as good as this, it’ll be worth it.

Inara George’s vocals are the only reason I like this. Ironically, I don’t really like her solo work or even other Bird & The Bee songs, but this song? The vocals are perfectly crafted, particularly on the verses. It gets a little close to spoken word, which is probably the appeal. More songs like this please.

I have to admit that when I first planned this post it was going to be a kind of nostalgic look back at a band that had seemingly gone downhill. Rilo Kiley have been one of my absolute favourite bands for the past five years or so, and so when the I heard the lead single from the new album, Under the Blacklight, I was disappointed. Then I read a lot of negative comment toward it, and my enthusiasm was pretty much killed. This led to me listening to some of their older material, particularly The Execution of All Things a lot over the last few weeks. Yesterday I finally heard the new album in full, and I actually quite like it. Whether the low expectations helped that or not I don’t know, and while it’s certainly not a masterpiece, it’s a fun record. So while the original intent of this post has kind of changed, I still want to give those early albums a little bit of attention.

Looking back, I think Rilo Kiley were the first truly indie band that I got into. I’d already been dabbling with alternative for a couple of years, with bands like Weezer and Semisonic becoming mainstays of my music collection. Then sometime in 2002, I heard a song on XFM (I considered XFM indie then too) that just grabbed me. I don’t recall ever hearing it on the radio again, but it was enough for me to seek it out online, and then even more from the same band. It was The Execution of All Things, which to this day remains my favourite Rilo song.

After that I explored backwards (2001’s Take-Offs & Landings) and when it was released, 2004’s More Adventurous, and however many b-sides and unreleased material I could find in between. Each album holds some special place for me (the latter providing this blog’s title), as do most of the band’s spin-offs and associated projects. To be quite honest, given these, I wasn’t even expecting another album until the announcement came earlier this year. Most of the other bands I hold a genuine affection for are no longer with us (some literally, others musically), so while I’m kind of torn over the new record, I’ll welcome it the best I can.

MP3 Rilo Kiley – The Execution of All Things (expired)
MP3 Rilo Kiley – With Arms Outstretched (expired)
MP3 Rilo Kiley – It’s a Hit (expired)
MP3 Rilo Kiley – Science vs Romance (expired)

Rilo Kiley: Website || Myspace

Presenting Rilo Kiley’s The Moneymaker from their upcoming Under the Blacklight album:

Decent video, but an awful song. A little of my enthusiasm for this album is ebbing away each time I watch.

But at least she seems to have got the country thing out of her system.

Rilo Kiley: Website || Myspace

Well I think I might have topped myself in the Christmas misery stakes with this one. Despite the small respite of The Young Republic song yesterday, we’re back to the more depressing Christmas songs today. This really isn’t a deliberate thing on my part, it just seems that most of my Christmas music falls into that category.

If there’s one word to describe this song, it’s cold. It seems odd that a song can sound cold, but boy, this song sure manages it. Largely just a basic backing and Jenny gently lamenting on how crappy life is. When you reach a chorus that pretty much just repeats “Cry into your Christmas cake / Don’t know what else to do”, you know this isn’t cheerful listening. It all builds to a rather nice ending, with a full choir and instrumentation joining for the last section of the song. But it’s still incredibly miserable.

MP3 Rilo Kiley – Xmas Cake (expired)