Denver Post

q & a
Singer's bold lyric sets pace for Rilo Kiley
By Ricardo Baca, Denver Post Staff Writer

"Let's get together and talk about the modern age."

It's a bold, fearless statement, especially when it's the first lyric on your album, as it is Rilo Kiley's. Singer Jenny Lewis wrote the line to open "The Good That Won't Come Out," a heartbreaking track that kicks off Rilo Kiley's 2003 sophomore CD, "The Execution of All Things."

The song is definitive of Rilo Kiley's sound. It starts out as an introspective, stream-of-consciousness jaunt that would be crazy-cool pop music if it weren't for some serious alt-country sensibilities coming through. Later in the song, the instrumentation abruptly doubles in size and sound, and Lewis talks of the lies she hides behind and eventually succumbs. "I think I'll go out and embarrass myself by gettin' drunk and falling down in the street."

It's proof that emo, when mixed with the lyricism of Jack Kerouac and the susceptibility of Hank Williams, is surprisingly powerful.

The Post caught up with Lewis last week on her way from northern California to Oregon. Her band plays Denver's Climax Lounge tonight with M. Ward, and Lewis was psyched with each move made toward the Midwest, which is a special place for Rilo Kiley and any other band that records for the Omaha label Saddle Creek Records.

Q: How did you end up with Saddle Creek for this last record?

A: At one point we were on tour with Superchunk and there was another band on the bill called The Good Life, and they were from Omaha, and they were on Saddle Creek, and Tim (Kasher), who's in The Good Life and also in Cursive, he sort of became the camp counselor and suggested that we follow him on this really long drive from the Northwest to Nebraska, and on the way we stopped in the studio where Bright Eyes and Cursive and The Faint all record, and then we decided that we wanted to make our record out there with Mike Mogus.

Q: They were a friendly group?

A: We became friends with everyone out there, and it seemed like an amazing place to put our music out and have an opportunity to tour with bands we really loved and have them play on our records.

Q: How did recording your second disc differ from the process the first time around?

A: The first one was recorded at home. ... The second one seemed like more of a legitimate thing, as opposed to a bedroom/living room/kitchen-type recording.

Q: You recorded in Omaha?

A: No, the studio's in Lincoln, Neb., an hour from Omaha. Some of us stayed in the studio on some mattresses on the floor, and we also stayed at this temporary, transient-hotel-type housing place. We called it the flophouse. It was within walking distance of the studio, so in the mornings we'd get up and walk through the snow to the studio and work all day and then go drink at the bar afterward. It was a pretty great process, really.