Rilo Kiley are Fucking Overrated
I often get the impression that Rilo Kiley generate a blinding fever of Indie Kid Panting Hots syndrome, simply due to the cocky foxiness of eye-candy-in-chief, Miss Jenny Lewis. She’s clearly decided in recent years that she is indeed a bit of a tasty morsel and that she shall be enjoying that for the foreseeable future, thank you very much. Indie kids have, in return for her kindness in parading about in a bunch of extremely short skirts and slightly mystifying leotard thingies, responded by elevating Rilo Kiley to the flagrantly undeserved status of indie heroes.
They’re not gods, they’re shit. Honestly, just not very good at all I’m afraid. I have fucking tried with this lot, honestly I have. Lewis’ collaboration with the Watson Twins on Rabbit Fur Coat produced a truly exceptional album and as such I convinced myself that there must be more merit in her other band than I had managed to notice thus far. I was wrong.
They have a couple of decent songs on More Adventurous – namely It’s a Hit and Science vs Romance – but that’s about it. Eventually I had to give in and admit they were crap, and I felt freer for doing so: liberated of the indie orthodoxy. None of the songs I have heard so far from their latest album persuade me that I am mistaken in discarding them either, and the excruciating video implies that the self-appreciative posturing is only going to increase.
Thing is, how did someone who produced something as lovely as Rabbit Fur Coat find herself unable to write a decent indie album? It’s clearly not just Joanna Newsom syndrome, whereby the highly unusual appearance of an extremely attractive woman in the indie sphere sends all the boys into a state of such frantic excitement that they blindly over-state her talents because they wish she was as talented as the girl in their heads. I mean, Lewis has at least written one blinding record, and having seen her live, she can really, really sing. But once she becomes a part of the band again it just doesn’t work and you get a mediocre album of unmemorable West Coast indie-pop-light. Don’t listen to your hormones boys, Rilo Kiley are the most overrated group in the world of indie at the moment.
Rilo Kiley – It’s a Hit
Jenny Lewis & the Watson Twins – The Charging Sky
Rilo Kiley – Silver Lining
