Rilo Kiley’s Big Adventure

By Suzanne Ashe

Performer Magazine
March 2001

When the members of the Echo Park-based band Rilo Kiley asked me to meet them at the Museum of Jurassic Technology I had no idea what I was in for. My first impression of the place was that it was dark, very dark. My second impression of the place was that it was "super dark," especially after I walked straight into a kiddie-coffin sized display case on my way to the Ladies Room.

After I felt my way back to the group, I found they were engrossed in an exhibit entitled "Bernard Maston, Donald Griffith and the Deprong Mori of the Tripiscum Plateau". It’s about bats that use special sonar to fly through solid objects–I could’ve used some of that on my little excursion–and the scientists who studied them. Blake Sennett, Jenny Lewis, Pierre de Reeder and Dave Rock sat with headphones on, intently listening to the narration while different sections behind the glass were spotlighted.

After learning about the multitude of attempts to catch one of these kinetically-determined creatures, it was off to the next goodie behind glass. The coyote exhibit; a video taped loop of a man howling, which is projected onto a figurine of sorts. All very odd, and dark."I get inspiration from art, science, and agriculture," Lewis says passing by a framed picture of a horned woman, Mary Davis of Saughall, on the wall. Profoundly put, considering the band consistently delivers songs that are well balanced both musically and lyrically. But it’s more than just the mix of instruments, it’s the mood that sets their music apart. Rilo Kiley’s multi-instrumental pop tunes and folksy pork-chop-gravy-with-biscuits ballads gives you the warm feeling that no matter what, nothing could go wrong while listening to one of their songs.

Ironically, the band got their name from a the tragic tale of two exiled, gay, high school football players, Ben Rilo and Stephen Kiley, who committed suicide in 1909 on the railroad tracks just outside of their mid-western town after making love for the last time. As a tribute to the two young men the band members adopted the name Rilo Kiley, which is also the name of the crossing where the two young men met their end.

There are half-dozen galleries and several twisting hallways in the museum: Escher meets Tim Burton, with hallways instead of staircases. Each wall is covered in pictures. Glass display cases jut from the walls or fill up areas of the room creating a cramped obstacle course. It gives you the feeling that you probably shouldn’t be here. You know the feeling you used to get from sneaking up to your grandparents’ attic to seek for hidden treasures when they thought you were in the backyard playing.

We slip into Gallery 5. Its U-shaped bench is perfect for an interview. I flick on my micro-cassette recorder. In the gallery is a display called "The Eye of the Needle: The Unique World of the Microminiatures of Hagop Sandaljian." Actually it’s three microscopic birds perched on a single strand of hair, which is balanced on the head of a needle. The only way you can see it is by looking through magnifying glass.

"This is the earliest version of the cookie," Lewis says holding up a bag of chocolate chip cookie remnants.

"The cookie crumb?" I ask.

"The cookie crumb," she echoes. Lewis is a bit of a paradox herself. She wears a pink T-shirt, torn at the neck and safety pins, three or four of them, run down the side. She tops this Valley Girl ensemble with a Brooks Brothers-styled gray jacket. The outfit reflects her role in the band–part creative hurricane, part mother hen.

"Subjugated by the delineation of two points in space, and the alchemists early notion of therapy the use of follicles, comma," Sennet says sufficiently reaching the limit of the big words allotted for the day.

Out of the Box

Their new CD Take Offs and Landings, due out this month, is a 12-song album offering more complex and polished tunes than their first release. Reflecting on the band’s Blondie-meets-Beck collection of melded, and melodied, pop/punk tunes; it seems only fitting that we find ourselves in the midst of faux knowledge. "The Frug," the band’s first single off their self-titled album typifies the ability of Lewis and Sennett, both 24, to write catchy lyrics and bundle them in finger-snapping sounds. It’s basically a laundry list of all the things the vocalist can and can’t do. "I can watch TV/I can start a book/I can hate your girl/I cannot fall in love." The song was featured in Morgan J. Freeman’s 1998 film Desert Blue and supports a video that currently gets rotation on MTV’s 120 Minutes.

Other selections off the album have appeared on the WB’s Dawson’s Creek and the big network Baby Boomer show, Once and Again, where the band got to appear as themselves. Last year the band was written up in Rolling Stone magazine. And their music is featured on the soundtrack of MTV’s Undressed. The band had a residency at Spaceland during the month of November, where they played with Pine Martin, Slydell, Irving, Quazar and the Warlocks. They have also joined the line up at both NXNW and SXSW music conferences in the last two years.

The musicians suddenly feel the need to leave a bit of art, or at least evidence, behind in the museum. Everyone hands over a treasure, an unused phone card, and one well-used tube of mascara. But Sennett takes a crumpled up cookie bag and decides to leave a note. "I’m okay," Sennett writes. "Please contact."

"Jerry Cohen," Lewis interjects. "My Godfather." She recites his phone number as Sennett writes it down. I get a sense of how things must work when they are writing music.

"How do you spell Kareem?" Duke asks. Then Sennett, de Reeder and Rock start rapping "K-a-r-e-e-m." Much in the way they would pound out the backbeat of one of their pop tunes. Then Sennett stuffs the ominous note into a drawer in a pedestal in the middle of the room. The offering is a time capsule of sorts left to be discovered some time far into the future. But, from the looks of the immaculately manicured displays, it would no-doubt be found shortly after closing.

For the members of Rilo Kiley, their best effort at leaving archivable artifacts is their music. Lewis and Sennett are as annoyingly adorable as Mates of State’s Kori Gardner and Jason Hammel. "When we write something together," Lewis says. "We (she and Sennett) usually come up with an idea but by the end of the session we’re all confused."

The new CD features Lewis’ twangy vocals on the country-tinged ballads of "Go Ahead," another laundry list song repeat things like "If you wanna marry the first girl that you meet, or if you wanna plant roses at me feet/ Go ahead. Go ahead." Music like this takes me from my cozy living room couch to the front row of the Grand Ole Opry. I can imagine them opening for Charlie Pride or Patty Loveless.

Then the mood changes a bit with the long instrumental lead in on "Always," I felt a bit of Radiohead experimentation going on with the use of the keyboards, samplers and other pop gem licks and tricks. Some of the interludes are reminiscent of "When I grow up" Garbage and "Name" by the Goo Goo Dolls, but with an ever present freshness. Sort of like the first time I heard "Wonderwall" by Oasis.

Like many of their contemporaries, Rilo Kiley worship at the same altar as Beck in regards to genre-hopping, or in their case genre-redefinition. But the long lists of things are as redundant as the early lyrical wonderment of The Police: Da do do do, da da da da. "Pictures of Success" is a list of all thew ways a person can die. Similar to their repetitive predecessors, however, the music is so complex and entertaining you almost have to stop everything else you are doing, including thinking, and just listen and smile.

The sun has long since slipped behind the horizon and the museum is about to close. And we are nearing the end of the interview, or at least nearing the end of quartet’s attention span. We head out to the parking lot to reclaim our cars and our lives. The next time I hear from the band is in the form of a Fed Ex package containing a freshly pressed 8-track CD entitled Selections from Take Offs and Landings by Rilo Kiley for Suzanne Ashe with a quicky sketch of an ascending airplane. A flash pops into my mind regarding the future eBay value of the disc. But then I just pop it into the Kenwood and give it a spin.

 

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