Certain UK publications at the start of the year stacked a lot of chips on Rilo Kiley’s More Adventurous being the breakthrough album of 2005. This faith, it turned out, was based more on the U.S four piece’s previous rap sheet than the dubious quality of the new L.P. As The Magic Numbers, Arcade Fire, Antony and The Johnsons and Martha Wainwright have charged ahead with records of startling quality, Rilo Kiley’s campaign was scuppered by a collection of new material that was as bloodless as it was contrived.
Anyone arriving late to the party was surely left wondering what all the fuss was about.
Thankfully, here comes Take Offs And Landings, their 2001 debut album, to act as a reminder that Rilo Kiley have the germ of greatness lurking somewhere within them.
System Of A Down fans would be advised to steer well clear – this is a jangly, countrified, mid-tempo place that exists at a cross-roads between pre-Document R.E.M and the wall-flower pop of Camera Obscura and Clem Snide.
Singer Jenny Lewis has a voice that may cause stirrings amongst any old Tanya Donnelly fans out there, and she’s also capable of a refreshing lyrical wryness (“When you first said that anything goes/Or a problem is a task disguised in work clothes/That’s when I knew I had to move” – Plane Crash in C). When it all comes together – ‘Don’t Deconstruct’, ‘Pictures Of Success’ and ‘Wires and Waves’ – Rilo Kiley are a fiercely melodic prospect who compensate for in charm what they lack in grit and any sense of danger or threat.
Perhaps because they had their heads in the clouds, Rilo Kiley’s tilt at world domination fell badly flat this year, Take Offs and Landings should remind them that they were a much better prospect when they had their feet on the ground.