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Review: Rilo Kiley at Stubb’s
Four songs into Rilo Kiley’s fluid and wide-ranging Monday date-night show at Stubb’s, lead singer Jenny Lewis set the record straight. “This next song is just a break-up song,” she said. “That’s all it is.”
That was enough to tip people off that the song would be “Breakin’ Up” from last year’s “Under the Blacklight,” a superb art-imitates-life album recounting the courtship and — you guessed it — break-up of Lewis and guitarist Blake Sennett. Not that friends-with-benefits relationships are uncommon in bands, but not since Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumours” album has a collection of songs so thoroughly explored the dynamics of said relationships with such candid endearment and melodic resonance.
Perhaps because it was the versatile six-piece (at times eight-piece) band’s spring-tour finale and therefore the temporary beginning of the end of the public life, Lewis took special exception to the closing refrain, “Ooh, it feels good to be free,” by jumping up and down like she was on a pogo stick and swiveling her head from side to side so that her long red locks could dance. Afterward, someone reached up from the pit and rewarded her with a bouquet of sunflowers.
The result of people acting like tabloid junkies about Lewis’s and Sennett’s relationship led Lewis to qualify many of the songs before playing them, even if they were from the band’s previous three, non-concept albums, of which there were many interspersed in between blocks of “Blacklight” songs.
Lewis prefaced “Capturing Moods” by saying, “This next song is an old song,” a declaration that elicited thunderous cheers even though the crowd hadn’t a clue what was about to be played. “It’s not a sad song,” she continued, “but it’s an old song.”
Another oldie, “With Arms Outstretched,” further testified to the devoutness of the crowd, sparking as it did a massive a cappella singalong and unified arm-waving. This relationship Lewis and Sennett have forged with their diehard fans, while on the road, seemingly has anchored them as they continue to figure out their own relationship going forward, and whether life will soon imitate art.
As shown by their theatrics on “Silver Lining” — during which Sennett took a break from his fierce guitar work to throw a bunch of silver confetti at Lewis while she played keys and sang, “I never felt so wicked/As when I willed our love to die” — what hasn’t killed them has only made them stronger.
(Photos by V.M. Black FOR AMERICAN-STATESMAN)
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