Jenny Lewis - The Voyager

This is getting a lot of pre release attention and the single is fantastic. The world needs more Jenny Lewis records, I think she is fantastic.

I only know that one song from the Bolt movie but it's a beaut.

Can't wait for this. One of the best lyricists around, too.

I like the album cover

http://cdn.stereogum.com/files/2014/05/jenny-lewis-the-voyager-608x598.jpg

I keep hoping she'll do another one with the Watsons, but no such luck.

With Rilo Kiley she had one of the 2 or 3 best records released last year, rkives. But she is due for something new. Acid Tongue wasn't very good. There were a couple years in the mid 2000s when she was the best songwriter around.

I'm not feeling this new song at all, and I even liked a lot of stuff from the Jenny & Johnny album.

xp what acid tongue is so so good.

The latter half of the album with the Watson Twins is some of my favourite songwriting ever so I always hold out hope for her but the new song just doesn't do anything for me. The production feels too cluttered and abrasive to support the song.

This is streaming on NPR right now. It's clear this is going to be her biggest record, and I couldn't be happier for her and music in general. She is great great great.

http://www.npr.org/2014/07/20/331347295/first-listen-jenny-lewis-the-voyager?autoplay=true

nice, thanks for the link.

I was never a fan before but "she's not me" is great

love jenny so much, "slippery slopes" is my fav so far.

her best solo record i think

Yep.

fully enjoying this album, this is the first time I listen to something by Jenny Lewis in any form.

I've got really mixed feelings about this album. On one hand I love a lot of bits and pieces of it, "She's Not Me" particularly, but on the other, I feel like this album is the first to really live up to the threat that "Give A Little Bit" posed on Under the Blacklight, where Lewis indulges a little too much of her love of cheesy pop and country radio (and as I just said, "She's Not Me" is pretty great). General feeling of Lewis exploring pastiches of pop from late 70s/80s and 90s (especially "A New You"). Because it's her, a lot of it is bound to work on her heart and charm, but some of it also feels pretty hollow in production and arrangement.

Also, "A New You" is the thinly-veiled Blake shoutout song this time around, right?

I wonder if they make a men's version of the suit she's wearing on the cover

I like the Voyager a lot.

The song that is

Also head underwater. This album starts strong and ends strong and is strong in the middle.

Yeah, "Head Underwater" is good stuff. Still giving the whole album more chances

And it IS a fabulous cover, no doubt

Just one of the guys is also fab. Those great enlongated vowels. "I'm not gonna praaaaay for you/ that's not what ladies do"

i just watched the video for that song on a whim and omg did i lol
the song is kinda slight (i liked the line about "another lady without a baby") but man that video is funny
kristen stewart's facial expressions were so otm

I wish it were more pop and country! Pop and country have tougher rhythm sections.

Brie Larson is the greatest

Didn't realize that Rilo Kiley finally "officially" broke up, I assume, after releasing rkives.

"She's Not Me" gets stuck in my head every few days, but every time I concentrate on the lyrics I think they're meh.

"Head Underwater" is the jam though.

some of the stories Lewis told about working with Ryan Adams on this record are great. He told her "Tonight I want you to go home and write your 'Wonderwall'" so she stayed up all night and ended up writing "The Voyager." When she played it for him he said, "Maybe we don't need to record that one."

He sounds like a fart, tbh

The Voyager was partially produced by Ryan Adams. The guy can be unconventional. What are some of the more unusual things he would do in the studio?
In some ways, I felt like he was needling me. He was winding me up. I was somewhat agitated at times, and I think it put me in a really cool place to perform those songs. Ryan is the most unique producer I've ever worked with, in his approach and behavior… He made me listen to five or six Creed songs, really loudly on these beautiful tube speakers. My ears were bleeding. And it was Creed! He was like, "This is great music. I want you to hear it." And by the third song, I was like "Huh. Umm. Yeah, I can maybe see that."

I don't know what I'd do if Ryan Adams asked me to go home and write my "Wonderwall." Do I look like the kind of guy who'd go home and write my "Wonderwall"?

He sounds awesome and this album is awesome

so I get "She's Not Me" stuck in my head at least once a week. I dig Adams' solos (open tuning?), and the penultimate one in particular reminds me Keith's bit in this obscure tune:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwRV7gmDIyk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgUAvzP-qmQ

Cool video, but this isn't one of my favorites from the record. Slippery Slope and Just One Of The Guys are the two standouts for me

Its THE standout from the record for me.

yeah "she's not me" >>>>>>>

whaaat "Late Bloomer" is obv the standout track! but the entire album is amazing

what nooooooooooo. i don't know. Slippery Slope and Late Bloomer were the kinds of songs that make me sad that Rilo Kiley is dead

yeah i never get sick of "She's Not Me", head and shoulders over the rest of the album IMO

that video was almost as weird as the "Just One of the Guys" one. nice Feist appearance. Fred Armisen staring into the camera while doing an air guitar solo wearing a Power Glove, dressed up as Fred Savage from The Wizard may have put me into Camp Overload

Jenny Lewis fans should definitely listen to rkives, the Rilo Kiley unreleased tracks album from 2013. It is absolutely incredible.

i didn't really get most of that video i'm sure but whatever, <3 jenny always

I didn't get what Hellville and the thing with the priest was supposed to be.

I think Hellville is meant to be Pleasantville, which I think might have been her last role as a child actor?

x-post for Call All Destroyer - they're all takes on movies or TV shows that she acted in as a kid, which I've gathered she hated doing (she talks about it on the title track from Rabbit Fur Coat) but has learned to appreciate with the distance of adulthood.

New project
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvHLKldiFuc

Nice as F**K--Jenny Lewis, Erika Forster, Tennessee Thomas supergroup

New album, On the Line out March 22. New single, "Red Bull and Hennessy," out now.

https://pitchfork.com/news/jenny-lewis-announces-new-album-release-date-shares-song-listen/

"She's Not Me" has become one of my essential tracks of the decade, no small thanks to Starbucks.

I love her. I wish I liked this song more.

I like a fair bit of her solo stuff--"Slippery Slopes" from the last album in particular--but truth be told, I think she did her best with Rilo Kiley.

I avoid people for whom Red Bull and Hennessy is a potent potable.

I watched The Force Awakens with my 6-year-old last night and repeatedly referred to the bad guy as Rilo Kelly

Song is ok. Sounds like the kind of radio soft-rock I didn't really like on the last two albums. Maybe it'll grow on me. I'm all in on Jenny, so whatevs, I'll get the album.
Gotta give it to her, she knows how to pick a promo image...

really loving this record, v much a continuation of the voyager imo

I'm not at "loving" yet but she had me at "Red Bull & Hennessy" and the title track. When I heard her band consisted of Benmont Tench, Beck, Adams, etc, I shuddered, but, man, she's learned how to write for a rock combo in the last decade. "She's Not Me" is one of my most played songs of recent years.

this was a solid interview/profile:

https://pitchfork.com/features/profile/jenny-lewis-on-the-line-interview/

"do si do" is wonderful

I liked how Pelly talked to several young female artists who looked up to Lewis, that was a nice touch.

That was my favorite part of it. I otherwise always thought of Lewis as sort of in this vacuum, this semi-mysterious not very prolific Hollywood hippie who doesn't seem to tour much, so the cultural context of her impact (at least on some) was useful.

remember when lots of male critics winced when Under the Blacklight dropped

under the blacklight def had some questionable tracks on it

Define "questionable." That's an adjective that sets me off as much as "controversial."

I play every Jenny Lewis album in my car for several months before I know what I think about it so I’ll be be back in June or so

xp sounds problematic

the first half of under the blacklight is some of my favorite music ever and i never listen to the second half. it's a weird album.

by questionable I mean my experience listening to half that album was thinking to myself, "why would this band write and perform this? why? WHY?" Years later Blake Sennett would admit publically to having similar thoughts.

that pitchfork article is pretty great, btw, thanks JD

I agree with both of you. It's not a particularly strong album.

If the second side starts with "Dreamworld" and includes "The Angels Hung Around" and 'Smoke Detector" and "15," then y'all are mad.

everyone's mad about "dejalo"

everything else on the second side is pretty awesome though i agree alfred

"Dejalo" is at worst ignored if you don't like it *shrug*

When I worked for Stylus, the male critics were pretty much grossed out by the album -- a sense that Lewis was doing something unseemly.

Huh. I was struck by the whole thing sounding sort of unseemly.

In many ways it's Lewis' best record. I guess she grossed out guys by writing from the POV of a wry Hollywood survivor

her best records are execution and voyager imo but blacklight is a close third

I recall the album being kind of ... smug? And I saw them on this tour and it felt kind of smug and shallow then, too. And I remember a video packed with porn stars.

I do know I hadn't heard it in years but saw her play live last year or so, and it was good but the first half was just Rabbit Fur Coat in its entirety (overrated album) and the second half was sort of a smattering of "hits," which sent me back to the albums. And listening to Under the Blacklight with fresh ears ... I still didn't like it that much.

to me the issue with side two is it sounds like a bunch of genre exercises that the band wasn't agile enough to pull off. especially jarring since side one is so sleek.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/rebound-rediscovery-rebirth-how-jenny-lewis-made-her-best-album-in-more-than-a-decade/2019/03/14/6700ded6-44c7-11e9-aaf8-4512a6fe3439_story.html?utm_term=.7be2813d7ce7

Washington Post interview by a freelancer is interesting too. But will I like the whole album is another question

This new one is really strong (at least on first listen). It wears its musical influences on its sleeve (I hear a lot of Chrissie Hynde in particular) but boasts excellent lyrics, which allows you to sometimes sort of tune out the (good) tunes and focus on her words. Still, I wonder why Jenny Lewis is hip but Aimee Mann is less so?

Lewis is more interested in pop and the better writer.

...now, at any rate. Mann isn't interested in a mass audience.

This beings fabulously, four of her best songs, then it sags in the middle to pick up again in its last two songs.

agree with that assessment alfred, but dogwood and do si do are very solid too

Lewis is more interested in "pop" how, exactly? Because this sounds as boomer indebted as Mann. (And not just due in part to all the boomers boosting it - hats off to Benmont Tench!).

Boomer indebted for sure -- and the new boomer cohort that dug Rilo Kiley -- but Lewis likes big hooks and promotes herself in a way that Mann no longer does.

Promotion (presentation) for sure, but I'm not convinced Lewis's hooks are necessarily bigger or more inescapable. Maybe she just varies the tempos a bit more, but I just put on Lost in Space and I can totally imagine Jenny Lewis singing most of these songs.

oh! I thought you referred to recent Mann.

Oh, no, ha. Current Mann is chill to the point of invisibility. I'm just surprised I never encounter people citing peak Mann the way they praise Lewis, when to my ears they have a lot in common, from the lost in LA vibe to the lyrics, at least to an extent. Lotta Mann songs about drugs and hard living.

I was listening to both Mann's peak stuff and Rilo Kiley at the same time in the early '00s.
(And I still love Mann, honestly - the latest one has some real good stuff on it, if obviously she's gotten much more subdued. You might wanna check out The Both as well)

The Both is great. I think I heard they were working on new stuff? I get the feeling things aren't going so well for Ted, or maybe he's just the rare rock dude to open up about financial difficulty.

Last time I saw Mann live, last year, she was great. Smaller band than usual, though.

This beings fabulously, four of her best songs, then it sags in the middle to pick up again in its last two songs.

(Though what the heck is "Bobby forever" in "On the Line"?)

Also, I really do love the production and general sound of it all, in particular the keys, reverb and drum effects (like Josh brought up, similarities to Aimee Mann's work). A lot of great contributors - besides the Benmont Tench keys, many other seasoned session players, and Beck did some consulting and backup vocals. Definitely feeling those Heartbreakers / Travelling Wilburys / Springsteen vibes. Kind of incredible that Ringo Starr contributed to "Heads Gonna Roll" and "Red Bull and Hennessy".

But yeah, "Heads"/"Red Bull"/"On the Line" are all among her best ever work, "Wasted Youth" and "Rabbit Hole" also great tracks.

new single is GREAT omg HYPED for the album

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tA0ewSoW14

Jenny Lewis - Psychos

a bit of a letdown, "Psychos" remains the standout for me, but "Puppy and a Truck" is also really good, enjoying the production here a lot more than "On the Line"

wouldn't go as far as Alfred though but that's because I don't see it as a failed country album

enjoyed the writing here all the same https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/jenny-lewis-joyall/

title track goes quite hard

this was an interesting read https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/jun/04/jenny-lewis-joyall-interview-rilo-kiley-harry-styles-puppy

Thanks!