Kiley Watch The Stars

Jenny Lewis, the thrift-store babydoll who fronts Rilo Kiley, has a thing about porn. The flame-haired singer grew up in Los Angeles’ San Fernando valley, epicentre of the American skin-flick industry and, on her band’s new album, Under The Blacklight, she taps her hometown’s swampy, seedy ambience.

Against a backdrop of glossy faux-70s arrangements (which, in the US, have seen the LA group tagged ‘the new Fleetwood Mac’) Lewis weaves darkly fascinating tales of decadence, dangerous sex and forbidden teen lust – the video accompanying lead single, ‘The Moneymaker’, even features real-life porn stars. From one outwardly so sweet – Lewis is a former child actress and, despite her sometimes filthy mouth, still retains an air of apple-pie innocence – the effect is simultaneously seductive and shocking: it’s like being dirty-talked by the girl next door with the cheerleader smile and the perfect hair.
Sumptuous ’70s atmospherics aren’t the only reason Rilo Kiley are feted as 2007’s Fleetwood Mac. There’s also the matter of Lewis’ past relationship with the band’s founder and guitarist Blake Sennett. Just as inter-group entanglements imbued Fleetwood Mac’s soft-pop opus, Rumours, with a bittersweet edge, Lewis and Sennett’s faded romance gives Under The Blacklight a gently recriminatory air.
This is particularly apparent on the tracks singer and guitarist co-wrote – listening as they croon over one another on ‘Dreamworld’, the LP’s fuzzy, bleakly delirious stand-out, feels like eavesdropping on a couple in the aftermath of an apocalyptic row.
Adding extra spice to the Lewis-Sennett dynamic is the former’s recent success sans Rilo Kiley. In 2006, Lewis put out a country-tinged, largely autobiographical solo record, Rabbit Fur Coat chronicling, among other things, childhood auditions and her showbiz parents’ quasi-itinerant lifestyle. Selling somewhere north of 150,000 copies, it easily trumped Rilo Kiley at the cash till. Sennett’s riposte was a solo stab of his own, recorded under The Elected moniker. Good reviews notwithstanding, the LP failed to register. Quite clearly, Sennett needs Rilo Kiley far more than his former squeeze does.
On a dishwater grey Irish summer evening what Sennett really could do with, however, is a little sunshine. Sheltering from a downpour backstage at the Electric Picnic, he has the off-green pallor of a man in the throes of serious vitamin D deprivation.
“Coming from San Diego, I need the sun,” he rues. “We’ve been touring Europe for the last few weeks and, man, it’s starting to get to me.”
His bellyaching is interrupted by a surreal interjection: fleeing the rain three dripping punters crash the tent where our conversation is taking place.
“You can’t send us out into that,” bristles one of the interlopers, her tone of voice making it clear this is not up for debate.
Rolling eyes at the incursion, Sennett, chaperoned by Rilo Kiley bassist Pierre de Reeder, is nevertheless eager to continue the interview. In particular, he wants to nail the rumour that, post-Rabbit Fur Coat, Rilo Kiley were on the verge of splitting. “Musically,” he says, “both Jenny and I had a lot of things we needed to get out of our system, coming off our last Rilo Kiley record (2004’s major label debut, More Adventurous). Both of our solo projects had a strong country thing going on. I think that was something we needed to purge before we could reconnect with the band. It’s part of being in a group – there are aspects to your songwriting you’ve got to purge on your solo projects.”
As to Under The Blacklight’s perve-pop flavourings (the single ‘Moneymaker’ is a jaunty ditty about prostitution, ‘15’ a non-judgmental tale of underage sex) Sennett cautions against trawling the lyrics sheet for autobiographical snippets.
“On the previous album, the lyrics were fairly personal. With the new one, there’s a lot of storytelling going on. Jenny came into the studio with most of the words basically finished. She’s playing characters on a lot of the songs. I don’t think she’s necessarily experienced the stuff she’s singing about first-hand. The song ‘15’ is, she says, about the best sex she never had.”
Lewis and Sennett were already a couple when Rilo Kiley formed in 1998 – they’d bonded over their shared experience as former child actors whose careers had, post pimples and hormones, gone into tailspin. Initially, Lewis was a reluctant frontwoman. She lacked confidence in her dusky voice and, notwithstanding her stage background (her parents were Las Vegas nightclub entertainers) dreaded the spotlight. With Sennett’s encouragement she persisted, though, and, by 2002’s The Execution Of All Things, Rilo Kiley were darlings of the post-grunge indie underworld.
In 2004 they signed to Warner Records. Sennett and Lewis were by then no longer a couple and their creative relationship was pushed to the brink as the group embarked on a thankless trek around the US in support of Coldplay. Rather than hanging out with their opening act, Chris Martin and chums jetted into and out of the gigs, leaving Rilo Kiley to stew backstage on their own. Sometimes, all four wondered whether they wanted to live this life any longer.
“It’s not healthy being cooped up with people in that atmosphere,” Sennett recalls. “That said, the band is bigger than anyone in it and we knew we had an audience to come back to. So we kept on going.“
Recorded partly in Los Angeles’ Sunset Sound studio, Under The Blacklight is the closest Rilo Kiley have come to a big-budget blow-out. Not that they exactly embraced the lavish setting. Despite Sunset Sound’s storied history – The Beach Boys cut Pet Sounds there – Sennett and Lewis bridled in the pampered atmosphere.
“We had to get out of there eventually,” the guitarist explains. “From where we were coming from it was too much: too much luxury, too much technology, too much everything. We had to fight hard to get the sound we wanted. There was a lot of struggle.”
Eleventh hour salvation arrived in the shape of Dr Dre/Eminem producer Mike Elizondo, who invited the band to finish the LP in his Hollywood Hills studio.
“While it’s his home studio, it’s not like it’s in his bedroom or anything,” proffers de Reeder. “I mean, it was a pretty top notch set-up. The difference is that it didn’t feel so much like a treadmill. In the other studio, there was an atmosphere of overwhelming expectation. Man, it was oppressive. Maybe some bands can operate in an environment like that. But not us.”

Under The Blacklight is out on Warner