If the buzz around their latest LP is anything to go by, LA quartet Rilo Kiley are set to be the biggest band you’ve never heard of. Their major label debut comes after years spent toiling away in the fields of off-kilter, collegiate pop and twangin’ country rock. Last year, while touring her ‘Rabbit Fur Coat’ solo debut, lustrous-voiced singer-songwriter Jenny Lewis found time to write a batch of new songs for her ‘main’ band. Overall, it’s out with the indie-pop song form and the self-consciously odd lyrical content and in with glossy, West Coast, ’70s soft rock and the MTV-slicked ’80s pop (Madonna, Cyndi Lauper) that Lewis grew up on. Plus more shots of her beloved country.
Given the darker themes (sex, power, money and their inter-relationships), it’s an odd – and not always successful – combination. Thus ‘The Moneymaker’ is an edgy stomp that reimagines The Gossip as Don Henley fans, and ‘Dreamworld’ is an almost indecently lush, double-whipped rewrite of ‘Dreams’. But ‘Breakin’ Up’ conjures the spirit of Sheena Easton and ‘Dejalo’ is a bafflingly clumsy assemblage of Culture Club, Wham! and Caribbean steel.
It can dazzle, but much of their fourth LP sees Rilo Kiley caught between a (soft) rock and a hard place. The discomfort often shows.
