Rilo Kiley Under The Blacklight Rating: 8.0 Label: Warner Brothers For fans of: Fleetwood Mac, Feist, Bright Eyes

If you ask me the perfect recipe for a good band is pretty basic. Take a guitar player or two add a bas player and a drummer then top it off with some smooth vocals. If you want a really good band take the same recipe and add some sex appeal. If you want an awesome band put Jenny Lewis in front of the guys and enjoy your well made band and the just desserts to follow. Those desserts being Under The Blacklight.

Anyone who liked More Adventurous has been waiting for seconds. Sure there were a few releases here and there from solo acts and side projects but we wanted something more something new, something fun, something different. Three years were spent listening to Broken Social Scene albums mixed in with Feist and Death Cab, a little Ryan Adams here and there maybe some ManMan for the adventurous types just to get out of that folk trend and at every party hearing the same thing. Some pretentious indie hipster who thinks he knows everything would get too drunk off his 4 beers and say “dude seriously how hot is Jenny Lewis? I can’t wait for the new Rilo Kiley album man…”. Shortly there after he either passed out or puked but that’s neither here nor there. The important thing is it’s here and it’s fucking good.

Summed up in a sentence this album is everything amazing we’ve missed from that spurt of female “alternative pop stars” back in the 1990’s. It’s almost like the band took all those hits from Fleetwood Mac and Lisa Loeb and the like put them in a blender and came up with the perfect reincarnation of them all at once. This album is exactly what we’ve been waiting for from Jenny and the boys and yes I know their names I just don’t care to mention them.

Under The Blacklight’s opening track Silver Lining has that nice sweet and springy sound anyone can enjoy and transitions perfectly into the melancholy second track, Close Call. It’s a good start for the fourth album but the real good stuff comes out with The Moneymaker. An unabashedly sexy pick for the first single off the new album and the vocals are amazing. Finally Jenny Lewis lets it out and sings. Seriously why was she holding back before?

The fourth track Breakin’ Up is my personal favorite whether you care to know or not. It’s just so damn fun. An upbeat sing along reminiscent of something one might hear playing in the bathroom of a freshman girls college dorm on a Friday while the gaggles of semi-innocent 18 and 19 year old coeds get ready for a night out. Following said lightly disco anthem is the albums title track. A perfect follow up seeing as how this seems like the track that would play in the head of the one girl who is lying in bed with her first college hook-up not drunk enough to be courageous about it and repeatedly playing some after school special about safe sex over and over in her head hoping “he’s the one” or “this isn’t a mistake”. As a side not losing your virginity to some drunken upper classman in your freshman dorm is probably not a good idea nor is he “the one”. Track six, Dreamworld, carries the same feeling with added vocals to balance it on a nice light and airy level, but more a carry on for the mood of Under The Blacklight.

The mood picks up again with song seven, Dejalo, another sexy song about a girl who pretty much doesn’t care about the next morning and just wants to get on with tonight. With lines like “I got a tail if you wanna chase, I got a tongue if you wanna taste it” who could say no to that girl, unless of course she’s the girl in track eight who apparently is only fifteen. Yeah she’s fifteen but how could he have known that she’d be down for almost anything. Do not skip this track. If you do I’ll find you and kill you. I’m just playing, but seriously listen to it.

The next song, Smoke Detector, is nothing impressive to me. It seemed a little out of place like it was a last minute choice to keep. It fits into the over theme and sound of the album, but doesn’t seem like a real great song overall just a time filler. It was a carry over to the final two tracks that should have just been right after 15.

Wrapping up the album in order are The Angels Hung Around and Give A Little Love. Progressively slowing tracks from one to the next they’re just the kind of songs to bring one down off this album like it was a drug. Angels is a folky tune about what seems to be the end of a dysfunctional relationship where either the girl is dead or left the sucker conquering him either way. Give A Little Love on the other hand is a nice, yes just nice, synth driven pop melody perfect for an emo kids mix CD to his new crush or equally emo girlfriend(unless he’s lucky enough to have the musically naïve slightly richer prep girlfriend who also happens to be an ex-cheerleader). It’s sweet but not too sweet and leaves the album at a fitting closing point. So go buy it or download it at risk of being caught and charged for pirating and enjoy.

Written by: Andrew on October 2nd, 2007 | Filed under Music Reviews