Let me start this review off by telling you something about myself. I’m a skinny little indie kid. You know the type exactly. We’re shaggy haired, have an aversion to shaving and prefer t-shirts with obtuse meanings that look like they wouldn’t be even fit to hold rack space at your local thrift shop. It’s only recently that I’ve been able to come to terms with this. It’s hard when much of the things you deem cool end up pilfered by the kids who used to beat you up in middle school and get their life lessons from tv shows about people in parts of southern California I wouldn’t be caught dead in. But like someone much smarter than me said, "so it goes." Now, I’ll let you in on a little secret about indie kids like me. We love great pop songs. It’s true. Remember that when you’re trying to tell scensters from the real thing. They don’t got no love for the Lovin’ Spoonful, they ain’t truly indie. Me personally, I also love a damn good country song.
All of this explains my love and admiration for Rilo Kiley. They were able to bridge these two little loves of mine and they did really well. Take their last album, 2004's More Adventurous. Sure it was their first for a major label but it had all the hallmarks of their previous two opuses, production somewhere between lo-fi and full on pop sheen. Nods to the four B’s of power pop: The Beach Boys, The Beatles, The Byrds and Big Star. Some Grahm Parsons country. Even a little Stax soul. What more could an essentially geeky music fan like myself ask for? This being said, you can imagine why I had high hopes for lead singer Jenny Lewis’ solo debut, Rabbit Fur Coat.
Well, maybe a bit too high as it turns out. Not to say that Coat is a bad album, far from it. It’s more an unsure album. I think it’s fairly obvious what Lewis was trying to do with this album. She, like me, is from LA and the truth about a lot of people in LA is that they would like to think they were from Texas but the truth is, they look bad in fringe leather. I think it’s safe to say that Miss Lewis fits into this category. Rabbit Fur Coat so desperately wants to prove that it’s worthy of a place next to Sweetheart Of The Rodeo or Buffalo Springfield Again and there in lies the problem. It tries just a wee bit too hard.
Lewis is smart enough to bring gospel pair the Watson Twins along for the ride and they add a bit of rootsy street cred to the disc (so does being released on Bright Eyes frontman Connor Obrest’s personal label Team Love) but as a singer, Lewis just has one of those voices that sound really great singing ooh la la la’s, not depicting hard luck tales. The problem with songs like Rise Up With Fists and Melt Your Heart is that they suffer from laziness, both lyrically and musically. Ordinarily I’m willing to forgive essentially minor sins like this but when the album itself is basically ten songs chocking in at just under forty minutes, you’d better be on you A-Game.
Which isn’t to say that the album is all bad. Aside from the aforementioned two songs, The Charging Sky and Born Secular are both fine tunes up there at the very least with the best of Blake Stennet’s side project, The Elected. By far the most interesting song on here though is the cover of the Traveling Wilburrys, Handle With Care. I say that because to people of my generation that’s they type of music our parents used to play on road trips in between books on tape and that’s not an insult. It was a refreshing reprise from John Grisham or whoever. I say interesting because of it’s cast of helpers. Lewis enlists Ben Gibbard (Death Cab For Cutie), Connor Obrest and M. Ward to help out. The song has a great feel to it. They keep to original’s jangly feel and tempo and most refreshing of all, nobody on it even remotely tries to be Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison et. al, although I don’t think I’m alone in thinking that M. Ward makes a great Jeff Lynne. In fact, the song best sums up the album. It’s a bunch of people getting together to make a record and not letting things like commercial interest and whether or not it will sound good on NPR get in the way (it will by the way.) Maybe next time they’ll come up with some more memorable tunes the next time around.
