Jenny Lewis perches perkily in her chair, fluttering eye-lashes the length of goose quills. Lewis, who fronts the LA quartet Rilo Kiley and, in indie-pop circles, rates as something of a pin-up, has a movie star smile and is inexhaustibly cheery.
She seems, in fact, a completely different person from the broken hearted songstress gracing Rabbit Fur Coat, a plaintive suite of country-pop that follows in the ragged tradition of great white soul records.
The album, Lewis’ solo debut, deals in familiar country rock tropes: unfulfilled love, the pain of a neglected childhood, wide, lonesome vistas.
What elevates it above the realm of tired clichés is Lewis’ voice, a dusky, honey-hued instrument that slices the listener wide open.
With lyrics that read like a litany of bad news, Rabbit Fur Coat suggests a life soured by petty traumas. If things are that bleak, how come Lewis is so upbeat?
“The songs aren’t really about me – I couldn’t possibly be that interesting!” she explains. “What I’m doing is telling stories. Most of the people on the record are fictional creations.”
Critics have focused on the title track, a gospel-tinged slow burner that tells of a child actor dragged unwillingly to auditions by her mother. Before becoming a singer, Lewis was a jobbing Hollywood thesp – the song, surely, is autobiographical?
“Well, it’s started with me,” she says, smiling, “but, I embellish. I make a song and dance of things. That’s what you have to do as a songwriter.”
Country rock is a familiar avenue for the unfulfilled indie musician. Could Lewis be fed up with Rilo Kiley, an OC sanctioned group that occupies a grey zone between Modest Mouse and any female fronted alt.band you care to think of?
“I’ll tell you the truth,” she confides, bending close. “My 30th birthday was on the way and I decided to give myself the best present in the world – my own album. I’m always writing songs and I had a few left over after the last Rilo Kiley record.”
Lewis already has a gold record on her wall; she sang backing vocals on The Postal Service’s Give Up, a side-project by Death Cab For Cutie’s Ben Gibbard.
The (unexpected) success of that project did not deflect Gibbard from his day-job. Lewis likewise says she has no intention of walking out on Rilo Kilo should Rabbit Fur Coat prove a hit: “I don’t think that would happen and even if it did, nothing would change.”
For many, the album’s standout is a cover of the Traveling Wilbury’s ‘Handle With Care’, which features Bright Eye’s Conor Oberst taking the place of Roy Orbison (Lewis lands the Tom Petty/Bob Dylan role).
“Conor was the one who persuaded me I could do my own record. In the US, it's out on his label (Saddle Creek). And we both love that song – completely and without irony. He was the only Roy Oribson for me!”