Jenny Lewis @ Mandela Hall, Belfast

Jenny Lewis may have disavowed her past as a child actress (she played Lucille Ball’s grand-daughter in some toxic early 80s US sit-com), but, judging by her entrance tonight, she has no intention whatsoever of giving up on the life theatric.
Flanked by The Watson Twins, the moonlighting Rilo Kiley frontwoman takes to the stage with an almost funereal grace – eyes fixed straight ahead while leading the ‘look what we got at the crossroads’ harmonies of ‘Run Devil Run’. The band haven’t started playing yet and she’s already conjured up an atmosphere that’s equal parts Appalachian wake and praise-be riverside baptism.
The elfin Ms Lewis (a charismatic, although expertly studied mixture of Sissy Spacek and Holly Hunter) has gathered together quite a troupe for the purposes of bringing the brilliant Rabbit Fur Coat to the people. Her mainsqueeze, Johnathan Rice (who – after playing Roy Orbison in Walk The Line – has caught the acting bug himself), is adding moonshine-drenched guitar to the mixture, and to her right the Watsons are drawing audible gasps from everyone present.
If, on record, their gorgeously diaphanous vocals encourage thoughts of winsome li’l sisters, in the flesh, they present an altogether different kind of prospect
They’re awesomely tall.
Draped in wall-flower 50s ball-gowns, when they start moving in tandem to the glitterball heartbreaker ‘Happy’, there’s a definite David Lynch vibe operating in the hall. It’s not clear if you should cry at the song’s bereft loveliness (Patsy Cline would have loved it), or check to see if there’s a severed ear on the floor.
Lewis’s debut album is a witty, brave, soulful, even provocative (‘Born Secular’ takes on the US Religious Right) record, with much more than a single colour on its palette. And tonight, we get eerily personal (‘Rabbit Fur Coat’), fierce and aggressive (‘Big Guns’) and even sassily teenage (a great harmonising version of Laura Nyro’s ‘We Met On A Sunday’). We also get ‘Rise Up With Fists’, which is a proper, nine carat anthem.
What’s equally thrilling is the quality of the new songs. ‘Paradise’ has the crowd clicking coins in accompaniment; ‘Jack Killed Marcy’ meanwhile starts off like ‘The Boy With The Arab Strap’ before plunging into a jaw-dropping Elvis Comeback Special.
Rilo Kiley really aren’t that great. As Jenny Lewis and her merry band leave the stage to thunderous applause, you can’t help but conclude that she’s finally found a better company to keep.