“You know, I don’t have a day job, so I have to do something
to feel productive, or I’ll just feel like a big loser up on a hill,”
says Jenny Lewis. She’s being modest, of course—she’s now
juggling multiple careers with apparent ease. It’s safe to say Lewis
won’t ever have a day job again, but she isn’t resting on laurels
yet.
“I don’t feel that I’ve ‘arrived,'” she insists, “and I don’t feel
like I’ve made a record yet on my own that I’m completely proud of.
There has been a lot of hard work, but within the creative aspect of
making music, I’ve always kind of followed the moment.”
There’s a lot of moment-following on Lewis’ latest, Acid
Tongue, an alternately precise and ramshackle record that dips into
country, soul, and blues-rock with plenty of verve if little sense of
risk. More than anything, it feels like a series of pastiches; opener
“Black Sand” should by all rights be a showtune, while “The Next
Messiah” strings together three disparate song fragments into a medley.
“That’s the most exciting one to play on the road,” she says.
“I think second tours on any record are always more fun,” Lewis
continues, who did a brief tour on the heels of Acid Tongue‘s
release last year. “As a performer, I treat every night like it’s a
play, and I take certain cues that allow me to free up vocally. I
always want to be a little more spontaneous, but there’s just something
about the repetition that inspires me,” she admits. “Yeah, it’s weird.
It really allows me to get to new places every night if I know where
the set is going.”
Jenny Lewis is well within the third phase of her career as a
performer, although the lines have been a little blurry. Phase One was
child star—you probably wouldn’t have remembered the redheaded
girl from The Wizard or Troop Beverly Hills had it not
been for Phase Two: frontwoman of Rilo Kiley. In the late ’90s and
early ’00s, Lewis and fellow child star Blake Sennett released a series
of incisive, hook-laden albums, earning them devoted fans who responded
to the songs’ incredibly lucid lyrics and Lewis’ point-blank delivery.
Rilo Kiley captured many listeners’ frustrations of being unfulfilled
despite having youth, looks, smarts, and talent to spare.
It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly where Lewis’ Phase Three began,
but I’d place it at her appearance on the Postal Service’s Give
Up in 2003, even though Rilo Kiley has put out two further albums
since then. Give Up marked that moment where everybody heard Lewis’ voice; she further established herself outside of Rilo
Kiley with a 2006 collaboration with the Watson Twins, Rabbit Fur
Coat, a solo record in all but name. It exhibited a softening of
Lewis’ sound, being essentially a post-modern country record with a
soothing, nostalgic hue.
After this current tour, Lewis says her immediate future is a little
uncertain, as are the long-term prospects of Rilo Kiley.
“It’s not off the table, but we’re not necessarily sitting down to
dinner with each other right now,” she explains. “But we are actually
working on a collection of B-sides and rarities…but shit, man, I
don’t even know what I’m going to do. It’s so easy to feel so exhausted
by the whole process of putting out records, and touring them
relentlessly, that I think I might benefit from a little breather.”