Jenny Lewis
began her career as a child actor in kid-friendly '80s movies like Troop
Beverly Hills and The
Wizard, but around
the turn of the millennium she moved into a bigger, brighter spotlight as the
frontwoman and co-songwriter of the much-loved indie-rock band Rilo Kiley. The
tiny-framed, big-voiced, frequently adorable Lewis blossomed into something of
an indie goddess over the course of the first three records she wrote and
recorded with Blake Sennett for Rilo Kiley. But it was her glowingly received
2006 solo debut, Rabbit Fur Coat, that cemented her status as a captivating songwriter and
performer in her own right.
Lewis
returned to Rilo Kiley for the band's 2007 major-label effort, Under The
Blacklight, which
landed atop several year-end best-of lists and earned the band the most popular
notice of its career, but also alienated some longtime fans with its buffed, pop-friendly
sound. Seemingly undeterred, Lewis has veered into yet another direction on her
sophomore solo disc, Acid Tongue. The new album replaces Rabbit Fur Coat's old-school country-gospel vibe
and backup vocals from the Watson Twins with a livelier collection of tracks
that draw from a rock, soul, and country influences, fused together in a
live-tracked studio setting and assisted by a stable of guest musicians. The
A.V. Club spoke to
Lewis the day
before her new album's release to talk about touring, the pros and cons of Pro
Tools, and how Elvis Costello stacks up against a tone-deaf puppet.
The A.V.
Club: You wrote a lot of Acid Tongue during the Rabbit Fur Coat tour and while you were doing Under
The Blacklight with
Rilo Kiley. Were you writing with another solo record specifically in mind, or
did it just grow out of the material that you had accumulating?
Jenny Lewis: Yeah, it wasn't the
same process as Rabbit Fur Coat, because I wrote those songs in a relatively short period
of time and thematically I wanted all the songs to relate to one another. With
this it was really a different approach. A lot of the songs came out of a live
context. We played them on the road 100 times, so we knew that we could walk
into the studio and record them the same way. So the record had a different
intention from the outset. It wasn't really a studio record, but more of a live record
in some ways. It was about getting the band together and creating an atmosphere
that lent itself to good chemistry between the band members and trying to
capture as much of the record live as we could.
AVC: You
seem to have a very collaborative mentality when it comes to your solo stuff:
You worked with the Watson Twins on the last one, and then your band and all
your collaborators are a really big part of Acid Tongue. I take it you're not a big
control freak?
JL: I'm a control freak with regards to
certain aspects.† I think you just
have to be when you're making stuff in the world. You have to have a clear idea
what you want. But I'm also fortunate to have friends that are great and I
trust them musically. So I think with this record that it was matter of having
guest musicians, but not having them overpower the songs. I think if you listen
to the record, sometimes it's difficult to pick people out, but they're
definitely there and I think that their presence is definitely more supportive
than anything else.
AVC:
Originally you wrote the title track from Acid Tongue as a potential Rilo Kiley track,
right?
JL: No, that's not true. I wrote it on
the tour for Rabbit Fur Coat. So it was first performed with that, and then recording
for Blacklight I
had all these songs. We [Rilo Kiley] tried "Acid Tongue" and it didn't really
work. So I tried it again for my record and it worked really well, immediately.
We recorded that one live actually, in a room with myself and the male choir.
AVC: The
live recording of Acid Tongue is really striking, that analog-y sound. Why did you to
want to record like that?
JL: I am a child of digital generation.
I have done most of the records with Rilo Kiley on computers, on Pro Tools or
other digital programs. On my last record we did half of it on tape and then we
dumped it into Pro Tools. Then we tweaked things and we comped the vocals
together and we doubled and tripled the [Watson] Twins. So it was very much a
record that Mike Mogis and I tweaked out on for a long time after making it.
With this record I really wanted to go in and capture the live spirit, mistakes
and all. I wanted to limit myself to 24 tracks, so that the songs did breathe
and all the parts could be heard. Just returning to the studio and recording on
tape I think it puts you in a different mindset, and I really wanted to try
something new. I think that Pro Tools is a very valuable resource and you can
use it in some interesting ways. Tape is very expensive. That's why we didn't
really take a long time recording this record. You can use Pro Tools in the
same way where you go into the studio and you limit yourself to 24 tracks and
you make a rule that you're not going to comp the drums together and fix all of
the mistakes. I really love hearing those moments on some of my favorite
records. It's fun to pick out the songs that speed up and slow down and all
those little flubs and strange harmonies. I think you kind of lose the human
aspect when you make things too perfect.
AVC:
What are some of those favorite records of yours that have that not-perfect
sound?
JL: All the things I grew up listening
to that were made pre-mid-'90s, and the records that were made in the studio
where we worked, Sound City. Tom Petty recorded there, Neil Young, Nirvana,
Fleetwood Mac. We were in the same room that Nevermind was recorded in, which was pretty
exciting. And that record, I know that they worked on it for a while, but you
really hear the room. You can hear the space and everything. It's so rocking
but so clear. I mean you can hear the distorted guitar and the background
vocals, and I think when you layer stuff in Pro Tools you lose that clarity a
little bit.
AVC:
Because of the way it's recorded, the record has this kind of freewheeling,
off-the-cuff vibe, but many of the songs, like "The Next Messiah," are way too
complex to be spontaneously hashed out during recording. How much did you bring
in and how much did you work out in the studio?
JL: We spent a couple of days arranging
the songs before we went into the studio, and we put together a Band A setup
and a Band B setup. The Band B setup was for the ballads and the Band A setup
consisted of Jason Boesel, Davey Faragher from Elvis [Costello's] band, myself,
Johnathan Rice, and Blake Mills on guitar. We kind of gave the more complex,
rock 'n' roll songs to Band A, and then we kept the ballads for the other
configuration. So we had a pretty clear-cut idea of what we wanted. But with "The
Next Messiah," we arranged that song in an afternoon and it took us a while to
get it right. Then when we got to the studio it took us all day to remember the
parts and get to where we not only remembered all the transitions, but where
the energy and the tempo were right. We had to choose the one with the right
kind of singing because I wanted my vocals to be live, as they are for the
entire record. So it took us about 10 or 15 takes of the mix to get it.
AVC:
That track is interesting in that it's a medley. Were those just scraps of
songs that you put together or was it composed as a whole?
JL: Actually, those were three separate
songs that Johnathan and I wrote together. We just played them around the house
for six months as different entities, and then we just started talking about
stringing them together. I'm a big Barbra Streisand fan, and I think the first
time I ever heard a medley was on one of her records. So we just put them
together and it was so fun coming up with the transitions, because if you're
slowing down to get to the second part, we had to speed up to get to the outro.
It was just totally exhilarating arranging that song and then recording it in
the studio, because if one person messed up at the seven-minute mark, can you
imagine the dirty looks he or she got from the band?
AVC:
What's your writing process like? Do you sit down and say, "Okay, I'm going to
write a song now," or do they come to you fully formed, or are you always
writing down lyrics?
JL: All of those things. I'm always
jotting things down on little scraps of paper that I sometimes lose, but if
I've written something down that's noteworthy I'll remember it. Some of the
ones that I don't need to remember I'll end up losing. Like last night we played
at the Ryman in Nashville and I reached in my pocket and I had a movie stub
from Pineapple Express, which I had seen weeks earlier, and I borrowed a pen from the night
security guard at the backdoor of the Ryman and wrote down some bullshit and
lost it, luckily. [Laughs.]
AVC: How
did the duet with Elvis Costello, "Carpetbaggers," come about?
JL: We had met each other a couple of
times. He actually called me when [Rilo Kiley's] More Adventurous came out. My phone rang and I
didn't recognize the number. I picked it up and it was Elvis on the other end
of the line. I truly thought it was a prank. Johnathan wrote "Carpetbaggers"
for us to sing on some of the Rabbit Fur Coat tour, because Rabbit Fur Coat, the songs on that record are not
exactly rocking. There are some mid-tempo numbers, but we wanted something that
was a little more upbeat. We sang that song as a duet on the road for about a
year. Johnathan sang it in a very low register, and when Elvis came in he
basically took it up an octave and changed the intention of the song, which I
really like. I think he made it less country. Wait, you asked me how it
happened. Sorry, I'm rambling on and on, I haven't had my morning coffee yet.
[Laughs.] I
e-mailed him, basically, and I sent him a YouTube video of myself and Johnathan
singing that song with a tone-deaf puppet.
AVC: A
puppet?
JL: A puppet, yeah. We did this thing
backstage at Town Hall a couple years ago for this puppet show called Steve
Paul's Puppet Music Hall. That was the only recording or reference that I had
for Elvis. So I sent him that YouTube and told him to ignore the tone-deaf
puppet.
AVC: And
what was his reaction?
JL: He acknowledged the puppet's lack of
skills. He was like, "Don't worry about it. I'm going to crush that puppet."
AVC: Acid
Tongue is
definitely, as you say, more rocking than Rabbit Fur Coat was, but it's still definitely
nostalgic. It's just nostalgic in a different way, kind of a '70s
California-country vibe. Was that a natural transition from the old-school
country of Rabbit Fur Coat, or was that a sound that you've always wanted to explore
and didn't really get a chance to until now?
JL: No, I really didn't plan out the
direction of this album. I didn't say, "I'm going to create a
California-country record." The songs kind of just came about, and my friends
happened to be in Los Angeles and these are the sounds that we created as a
group. I think you can definitely hear the influence of the producers on the
record, myself included. Some of it might reference some older Rilo Kiley songs
because that's where I come from, I kind of come from an indie-rock world.
Farmer Dave Scher, one of the other producers, he was in a band called
Beachwood Sparks. They're a Sub Pop band and they were and are huge fans of The
Byrds, so you can kind of hear some of those aspects listening to some of the
singles on the record. Johnathan Rice made a record in the same studio the year
before and his record was heavily influenced by Tom Petty, so you can kind of
hear some of those aspects, like some of the tones of the guitars. The whole
thing kind of reflects the overall varied tastes within the group and within
our production team. Between the four of us we make one really sweet human
being.
AVC:
It's interesting that this is what immediately followed Under The Blacklight, because that record has such a
different set of influences—it's more dance-oriented, and just shinier.
JL: I like all different kinds of
music, but that particular sound reflects Rilo Kiley. That isn't entirely my
sensibility. It's about what the four of us enjoy listening to and playing as a
group. So that's what you get when you throw us into a room at that particular
time. This record wasn't necessarily a reaction to Under The Blacklight, but I think the process with which
we made this record was. It took us a long time to make Under The Blacklight, and it was somewhat agonizing
because of that. This record was made in under three weeks, which I think for
me, I tend to work well within a deadline. If I know I have to get something in
three weeks, I tend to A, enjoy myself a little bit more, and B, really work
well.
AVC:
Speaking of Rilo Kiley, fans of that band seem very protective of your
so-called place in it. Do you ever worry with your solo material that how
they're going to react to it, because it is in a pretty different direction
than in the band, or are you like, "Screw you guys. This is what I want to do."
JL: I know. I mean I love all of our
Rilo Kiley fans, but you know, that's a different band. I'm not trying to repeat
myself or cater myself to one specific group of people. I think the people that
come out to my shows, it's a different kind of audience. Certainly, some of the
Rilo Kiley kids are there, but I think also there is an older factor in the
crowd. So I hope with my records that we reach all different kinds of people.
Senior citizens are welcome. Babies can come, too. I like babies, but not in
the front row. I don't want to sing directly to a baby.
AVC: Acid
Tongue seems
to move away somewhat from the religious theme that was on Rabbit Fur Coat, lyrically at least, but there's
still definitely kind of a spiritual vibe or some gospel overtones on some of
the new songs.
Do you consider yourself a spiritual person, or is it more of the aesthetic
that appeals to you?
JL: No, I think I'm a person who is
always looking for answers. I'm always questioning things and searching for
clues. I tend to also to get bored with one subject, so I think I exhausted
some of those ideas on Rabbit Fur Coat and I think I exhausted them in a way that's very,
you know, in your twenties singing about these things. I'm sure as I grow and
age I'll probably revisit some of these things later. But these are the
questions that we all ask ourselves. We ask if there's a God or there isn't a God,
if we're going to fall in love or get sick or follow our dreams or fail or
succeed. All of these things tend to crop up.