Under the Blacklight

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. ... Read More...