Jenny Lewis

There's something foreboding about Acid Tongue, the latest solo effort from Rilo Kiley's femme fatale songstress, Jenny Lewis. It's as if she twists Los Angeles inside out through eleven songs about the city's more "colorful" denizens. The album's something like a '70s dream pop record. It's as equally marked by gorgeous melodies as it is by drugged-out themes. However, this is Los Angeles, and Lewis may very well be the city's indie poet laureate. If not, she certainly deserves to be.

Her voice simmers with soul, as she hypnotically tempts on each and every verse. The slow, jazzy bass on "Black Sand" lays the perfect foundation for Lewis to build a dreamscape. "Pretty Bird" casts a dark haze of pained guitar swells and slow, acoustic riffs, while Lewis peeks into a lover's psyche and gently lets out her heavenly croon. The images that Lewis evokes are dark enough to make Portishead wince. However, she never comes off as forced. It's as if Lewis feels at home with the creeps, and she loves to sing about them. She did grow up in the San Fernando Valley, mind you.

Her chosen characters—"The boy on the black sand" and "A cocktail waitress who thinks she's an artist"—are all distinctly "L.A." That old adage, "Write what you know," certainly wasn't lost on Lewis, but she brings these freaks to such vibrant life that you can't blame her for drawing inspiration from her backyard. The girl can certainly rock too. On "Next Messiah," her voice careens across a bombastic, bluesy beat that wouldn't be out of place in a Led Zeppelin song. "Carpetbaggers" is an upbeat rocker that illuminates Lewis's range. Even with its eerie title, "Jack Killed Mom" is strangely ethereal. "Sing a Song" is the perfect closer as it pulsates with a slow groove, letting the singer's magnificent voice shine.

Lewis proves that it is often a "Bad Man's World." However, behind all the smoke and seduction, there's real heart, and that's why Acid Tongue deserves your undivided attention.

—Rick Florino
09.22.08

Somewhere along the way, Jenny Lewis decided that she wasn't an indie rocker but that she was a lady of the canyon, a singer/songwriter spinning stories on her own instead of languishing in a band with her ex-boyfriend. By the time of Rilo Kiley's too-eager-to-please crossover attempt Under the Black Light in 2007, being in Rilo Kiley was indeed languishing for Lewis, as the group muddled through tight-fisted funk harshly framed by an over-lit production. Acid Tongue, Lewis' second solo album, acts as a rebuke to all the considered calculation and perfunctory polish of Under the Black Light. Nothing about Acid Tongue feels over-thought, a problem that plagued both Under the Black Light and her solo debut Rabbit Fur Coat, whose rustic country-soul vibe occasionally played like a studied pose, particularly as Lewis picked up on every one of Elvis Costello's overheated literary lyrical tics. Experience -- either life or professional, it doesn't really matter -- has sanded away much pretension within her writing, taking Lewis down to her chosen foundation: early-'70s West Coast rock, rooted in country-rock but touching on gospelfied blues and R&B, pitched somewhere between Laura Nyro and Bonnie Raitt, colored by spooky ballads and sweeping strings swiped from early Elton John.

As a solo artist, Lewis is a proud traditionalist, adhering to the constructs and conceits of classic singer/songwriters, which can come across as affectation if she's too careful to follow conventions, like she was on Rabbit Fur Coat. In stark contrast to that 2006 LP, Acid Tongue is open-hearted and thrillingly alive, an album that's all about a live band making a big, joyful noise in a small room. This was largely recorded live in a short span of time and it feels that way: when it rocks -- as it does on the furious "See Fernando" and "Jack Killed Mom," both picking up speed like a runaway locomotive -- it's invigorating, while softer moments like the girl-groupish "Trying My Best to Love You" have a warm intimacy. There's a communal vibe here, which is only appropriate as these sessions had a revolving open door, bringing in plenty of friends and guests, including old reconstituted hippies like Chris Robinson of the Black Crowes, wannabe troubadours like Lewis' boyfriend Johnathan Rice, both halves of She & Him, and Jenny's idol Costello, who appears for a rip-roaring duet on "Carpetbaggers" and lends his protégée some of his Imposters, including drummer Pete Thomas who gives this a wallop.

This old-fashioned jam session gives Acid Tongue a crackling vitality but what's remarkable about the album is how much more comfortable Jenny Lewis seems here, as both a singer and writer. The vigorous music undercuts any lingering stodginess from Lewis' classicism but she's also shaken off the cobwebs on her writing, mastering an elusive, open-ended melancholy that makes "Black Sand" truly haunting and not wasting space even when "The New Messiah" spills out to upwards of ten minutes. Lewis isn't exploring new territory here; instead she's digging deeper, tossing out what hasn't worked and sharpening what has, finding a way to carve out a distinctive voice within a tradition instead of redefining the style. That's tough work, as it takes time to hone those skills, but Acid Tongue is where Lewis finally pulls it all together and delivers one killer of a record. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Rovi