Are We Breaking Up?

It was with some trepidation and a few friends that I went to the Bright Eyes gig last week. Never having listened to much of their stuff, my real reason for attending was for the support band - Jenny and Johnny. The touring twosome are Jenny Lewis (of Rilo Kiley fame) and Jonathan Rice (of being-Jenny's-boyfriend fame). I'm being a little harsh on Jonathan there. He's a moderately successful solo artist in his own right, and also starred as Roy Orbison in the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line.

So to be more specific, I was really there to see Jenny Lewis. You see, I've been a fan of Rilo Kiley for a number of years, and have dutifully attended every reasonably close gig they or their bandmembers' various incarnations have played in my vicinity since 2005. This includes several outings as Rilo Kiley, a couple of Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins, as well as a trip to Leeds to see The Elected, the side-project of Blake Sennett, Rilo Kiley's lead guitarist (and Jenny's former boyfriend).

A former child star, performing comes naturally to Jenny, and this gig was no exception. She moves confidently on stage, and while her dress style may not have changed much over the years - sporting a short, floral-print dress matched with white tights and her flame-coloured hair in a fringed cut - her musical style certainly has.


The early Rilo Kiley records are experimentary avant-garde country indie-rock, with each subsequent album release gradually becoming more and more mainstream, culminating in the release of 2007's Under the Blacklight that saw the band's highest chart position at #22 in the US Billboard 200.

Her early collaboration with the Watson twins produced a gospel-style album of harmonised folk and country songs, which was followed by 2008's Acid Tongue, on which Jonathan's influence begins to be seen.



The current partnership sees Jenny's developed song-writing techniques put to Rice-style melodyless music, the lyrical content failing to hit home without the killer hooks of the Rilo Kiley work. The live show is actually better than I expected; it feels far rockier than the rather drab studio album "I'm Having Fun Now", thanks in part to an energetic and spirited performance from Rilo Kiley drummer Jason Boesel. Jenny and Johnny just doesn't have the magic that Jenny and Blake had - Jenny's song craftsmanship matched with Blake's raw emotion far better than with Johnny's dull-as-dishwater delivery.

Perhaps the clue to the problem is in the title of the album; Jenny is happier now than when with Rilo Kiley. There's nothing worse for a creative than satisfaction. If it were up to me I'd lock Jenny and Blake in a shipping container until they emerged, crying and bleeding, with RK's sixth studio album.

It's rather sad that one of the catchiest songs of the set is My Pet Snakes, a bitch-fest directed squarely at Blake Sennett that contains such cutting lines as

"(You) talk a lot of shit, but you would never start a fight" (Johnny)

"I'll sink this ship if I want" (Jenny, obviously in reference to RK)

and closes with the venomous

"All the best of luck with your career"

Now Jenny's songs have always drawn on her own life, as one would expect from a prolific songwriter, however the problem with airing such grievances in public in this fashion is that it forces the audience into a position of complicity; to applaud the song tacitly approves the sentiment and places the audience in "Team Jenny" by default.
That's why I wore my "The Elected" t-shirt to the gig - I refuse to play partisan politics with two of my favourite artists. Not that Blake is behaving any better; his new album Bury Me In My Rings contains a few ill-concealed stabs in Jenny's general direction:

"You think you're so cool/You think you're so hot/You've got those "go for the throat" eyes"

"So it’s the long face, nothing but dead eyes/I couldn’t miss them if I tried"

"You may not know what you are, but you know what you’ve done/And now you’re back out on the road havin’ fun"

The morning after the gig, I check the status of the band and find that Blake's announced that day (somewhat unsurprisingly given the acrimony) that Rilo Kiley have officially broken up. I guess there's really only one song to play at this point.

Let's not remember Rilo Kiley for the bitterness that has marred their final hours. Better to remember the good times, the happy times.
Rilo Kiley, thanks for the memories.