Rilo Kiley Under the Blacklight

Much in the way pop-punk band Paramore would be nothing without Hayley Williams, it's hard to imagine Rilo Kiley without Jenny Lewis. The lyrical center of Rilo Kiley, Lewis, with a keen sense for storytelling and broadening her emotions to be both strangely acute and boundless at the same time, is a thinking man's woman. In her sometimes-treacherous journey from indie pop rock to the mostly unhindered indie pop, Lewis remained faithful to the one thing that always drove her albums: her heart.

It's disconcerting, then, that Under the Black Light's biggest disappointment is not its overtly disconnected electronics but Lewis' decision to write not from her head and heart, but between her legs. While tracks like Money Maker lividly gyrate in its ode to '80s sexuality in tone and crass beat, Lewis skimps around on a tale of prostitution. No longer at the service of realism or even darkly comedic (one of More Adventurous's most charming attributes), Rilo Kiley as a whole seems more excited at the prospect of broadening horizons without ever thinking to test the waters; a throwback to '70s and '80s pop as much as it is a love letter to Ben Gibbard's own side project The Postal Service which, no surprise here, Lewis guests on, Under the Blacklight is as ambitious as is smart, which is to say it's not very ambitious at all.

A send-off to Rilo Kiley's sometimes country roots, Silver Lining actually provides one; gently meshing the old and the new, it provides a fluid transition into what one figures they're expecting. It, at least, seems genuine with Lewis' inflection and beautiful chorus: "I'm your silver living, but now I'm gone." Lewis' biggest draw was her truthfulness, so why should she be any different now? The unflattering Close Call follows, Lewis sounding like a poor man's country version of the imperfectly perfect Regina Spektor, and is Silver Lining's opposite, which is to say it seems barely there at all. "The funny thing about money for sex is you might get rich," Lewis sings, and one wonders where this infatuation with promiscuity came from. It only makes Blacklight seem tainted, guided by the ode to the deed in Money Maker. But if Blacklight is characterized by what it does wrong (which it does, more so than you can credit it for being right), then its solid moments account for why Blacklight is all the more disappointing.

Breakin' Up hints at what the record could have been, to Blacklight what Portions for Foxes was to More Adventurous. While it doesn't possess the scope of that pop highlight, Breakin' Up boasts a kind of tongue-in-cheek '70s saunter which makes it so damn catchy. Lewis could, for all accounted purposes, be a great actress; Breakin' Up's first half is bathed in sincerity, Lewis detailing the lonely heartbreak in her southern drawl. It's second half, climaxing into a gospel chorus chant of, "Oh, it feels good to be free!" could very well stand up to quintessential karaoke party anthem, I Will Survive (the similarities are almost striking).

The title track, more of the country-electronica mix that album is now almost accustomed to (beginning with the more inspired moments of the album) is a sneaky ballad more noticeable for the male vocal mix. Tracks like Smoke Detector and Dejalo, while not necessarily great, are as catchy as the album can get, the former's drum machine mechanics and the latter's samba styling making its verses as well tuned as anything else here.

But mostly, Blacklight succumbs to contrived, lacklustre tracks like 15, another country-electronica mix that fails everywhere it matters. Lewis' country drawl seems forced here in the blues guitars and modern day country radio chorus. More well-received could be the acoustic lined The Angels Hung Around, but it's all too little too late, with Give A Little Love's last-minute attempt to draw out its gimmick (with pianos!) into an early-'90s R&B ballad, which is to say it's out of place to the point of hilarity.

It's not that Blacklight is an awful record, but there's so much unnecessary production that it seems Lewis and those involved were simply too excited to try something new; I'd blame Lewis' time spent with Gibbard, but (like the prostitutes that Lewis seems inclined to coo about), this is her problem, and her problem to sort out.