Rilo Kiley Under The Blacklight CD

Initial pressings include a bonus CD.
Audio Mixers: Jason Lader; Adam Hawkins .
Photographer: Autumn DeWilde.
L.A.'s cuddliest indie-rockers go for the gold on their fourth album and major-label debut. The warm and fuzzy country/folk-inflected sound that made Rilo Kiley an underground sensation is shunted aside in favor of a more radio-friendly approach. This stylistic expansion encompasses everything from lite-funk grooves and soul horns to New Wave synths and crunchy, chugging guitar riffs. The album-closer, "Give a Little Love," sounds like some alternate-reality mash-up of Beyonce and 10,000 Maniacs, with its skittering drum loops and R&B/pop flavor.
None of this is to say that indie heartthrob Jenny Lewis and cohorts have become either the Yeah Yeah Yeahs or Hillary Duff; there are a couple of tracks that still hark back to the Rilo Kiley longtime fans know and love, and even the new directions keep the listener within walking distance of the band's initial aesthetic. Nevertheless, UNDER THE BLACKLIGHT is the sound of a word-of-mouth sensation expanding its reach and its grasp simultaneously and making its bid for household-name status.
Under the Blacklight, Rilo Kiley's 2007 major-label debut, is surely designed as the Los Angeles quartet's entry into the big leagues, the album that makes them cross over to a mass audience -- or perhaps it's just meant to make their now de facto leader, Jenny Lewis, cross over, since it plays as a sequel to her 2006 solo stab, Rabbit Fur Coat, as much as it plays as the successor to 2004's More Adventurous, putting the former child right out front, bathing in the spotlight. If More Adventurous gave the group's game plan away in its title, so does Under the Blacklight, for if this album is anything, it's a sleazy crawl through L.A. nightlife, teaming with sex and tattered dreams, all illuminated by a dingy black light. So, it's a conceptual album -- which ain't the same thing as a concept album, since there is no story here to tie it together -- and to signify the sex Lewis sings about incessantly on this record, Rilo Kiley have decided to ditch most of their indie pretensions and hazy country leanings in favor of layers of ironic new wave disco and spacy flourishes pulled straight out of mid-'80s college rock. Echoes of earlier Rilo Kiley albums (and even Rabbit Fur Coat) are still evident -- the title track is a slow country crawl at its core, the opening "Silver Lining" glides by on a subdued blue-eyed soul groove reminiscent of Cat Power's The Greatest, a move that "15" makes more explicit, while "Dreamworld" plays like an easy listening makeover of prime R.E.M. The latter is the only song here where Blake Sennett, once a co-captain with Lewis, sings lead, confirming that he's now firmly in a subservient role to his former paramour, who dominates this record the way Natalie Merchant used to rule 10,000 Maniacs, leaving the impression that the band is now merely her support group.
This may not be entirely true -- Rilo Kiley still sound like a cohesive band here; Sennett's guitar is often forceful, not meek -- but Under the Blacklight nevertheless plays like a star turn for Lewis, for better or for worse. Better, because she reveals here that she has the charisma to be a star, leading the band through some dicey territory with her vocals, which are easily her best on record. Worse, because she's the one that pushes the band toward sheer silliness through her carnal obsessions, which all come from the cranium, not the crotch. Since Lewis writes about sex at a safe, studied distance -- and even if her vocals are newly throaty, she doesn't sound sexy -- the group overcompensates with stiff disco-funk since that, naturally, is music that signifies bad sex. And there is nothing but bad sex here. There's the tragic girl gets "money for sex" on "Close Call"; there's the implied pornography on the clenched-fist funk of "The Moneymaker"; there's the spoiled virginity of the titRolling Stone (p.66) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "[I]t's yet more adventurous, a prosperous band's challenge to its comfortable cult..."
Rolling Stone (p.108) - Included in Rolling Stone's "50 Top Albums of the Year 2007" -- "The big, bright pop-rock record these ex-indie-rockers always had in them..."
Spin (p.131) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "They're too wily to settle for cheeky synth-pop pastiche....The former child actress heartily gives herself over to a variety of roles..."
Entertainment Weekly (p.130) - "There are inspired moments, like the bouncy cross-country kiss-off 'Breakin' Up' and the soaring brass of the Dusty Springfield-esque '15.'"
Uncut (p.78) - 5 stars out of 5 -- "Ms. Lewis has jettisoned the loose and scratchy indie sketches for the warm immediacy of classic black pop music -- Motown and Stax especially -- to get her thoughts across....A quality album chock-full of what we used to call hits."
Q (Magazine) (p.82) - Ranked #17 in Q's "The 50 Best Albums Of 2007" -- "[S]ome of their best songs to date..."