Rilo Kiley

CMJ NEW MUSIC MONTHLY

October 2002

"I'm on a mission with my best friend to find a ghetto mansion. All the furniture will be stuff we find out on the street," Rilo Kiley singer/keyboardist Jenny Lewis explains excitedly, planning how she'll make ends meet until her band's next tour. She's selling her car, then looking for the biggest, cheapest homebase in Los Angeles – this isn't a complaint, it's an adventure. The broke-yet undefeated tone of her words is right in tune with her band's Saddle Creek debut, The Execution of All Things. Although the lyrics tell of muddling through tough times, they're backed by horns and strings as triumphant as the Thanksgiving Day Parade, and anchored by a voice that shifts effortlessly from fragile to ferocious. With a child stardom-studded West Coast upbringing (Lewis played opposite Fred Savage in the Nintendo-rific flick The Wizard and guitarist/vocalist Blake Sennett starred in Boy Meets World and Nickelodeon camper series Salute Your Shorts), it makes sense this pop foursome's most disenchanted songs are caught up in sunshiny beats and catchy carnival music. Rilo Kiley transports the disillusionment of labelmate Bright Eyes from the start Nebraskan landscape and double- parks it next to some palm tress at an L.A. juice bar. Speaking of parking, once that car money's run out, how will the fresh-from-tour Lewis afford that mansion? "You can always find some obscure job, some non-defined, fucked-up job," she grins, "like watching someone's ferrets."