Show Review: Rilo Kiley - 9/17/07

Hi there. I’m Guest Anchor Center Correspondent and Chief Rilo Kiley Expert Enthusiast Mandy Levy. Nice to meet you. Pete Ohs has so graciously opened up his heart and his award-winning blog to me, and has allowed me to share my most recent Rilo Kiley experience here on the world wide web, with you, his fervent followers. So thanks Pete! And with no further ado…

So Rilo Kiley is my favorite band, hands down (save the Beatles, but that’s different). And Jenny Lewis is more or less my favorite person in general, ever. I went up to see them in Detroit last Monday, making it the 6th time I’ve seen them live, finally knocking Oasis out of my number-one position for live-acts-seen-most-often. (Cut me some slack; it was when they were awesome). Anyway, my friends and I got to the venue about six hours early (we still weren’t first in line!!) and the day turned out to be “more adventurous” than we expected…

We actually met Jenny Lewis! It was my dream come true! We found her hours before the show shopping at an American Apparel down the street. How LA, right?? (I’m recycling that joke; I used it on Jenny when I was posing for a picture with her. I’m sure she thought I was way clever and cool).

I look really stupid because I’m probably on the verge of pissing my pants. I thought about Photoshopping myself, but what does it matter; no one’s looking at me anyway.

Anyhow Jenny was way nice and wearing an awesome outfit and not a drop of makeup and looked great. AND she told me she liked my dress!!!!! Or at least I think that’s what she meant. Here’s how it went down:


MANDY: Hey Jenny, I know you’re shopping and all, but when you’ve got a
minute, do you think I could ask you some questions for my boyfriend’s video
blog, the Anchor Center?
JENNY: Ummmm…..no…..
MANDY: (Freaking out) Oh! Okay! No problem! Sorry!
JENNY: That’s alright. Thanks for asking and not just firing away.
MANDY: Oh I’d never; I’m no professional.
JENNY: (Looking Mandy up and down) But you sure dress like one.

God could have struck me down right then and there. Life was complete.

Luckily, though, I lived. Because only minutes after meeting Jenny, we found out that they were playing a secret acoustic show at a bar down the street before the concert! We hurried over, and even though it was only a three-song set, oh man, was it worth it! Here’s their acoustic version of Close Call:


Youtube Link
Girl can sing. And I’ll tell you what—I wasn’t instantly gaga over Under the Blacklight when I got it. I sorta thought it was cheesy and easy and predictable at first, finding myself likening it at times to Lisa Loeb and Bonnie Raitt and even fucking Tom Petty. But now that I’ve seen her perform these poppier songs live, with just as much belting emotion and thoughtfulness as Better Son or Daughter or I Never, my whole opinion of this newest album changed. She still means and feels what she sings, and damn, does she sing it well. She’s indie rock’s Whitney Houston—never misses a note. I love her.

At the actual show, we were front row center. (Six hours early always pays off! I learned this from my fighting days in the boy band war zone). Good Ole Party played—pretty cool girl drummer, lots like Karen O., awesome awesome hot pants—and Jenny’s lover, Jonathan Rice, opened as well. He’s okay. Hot, cool, funny…I’m just not so taken by his songs. Anyhow then Rilo Kiley came out. It was perfect, she was perfect, they were perfect, blah blah blah, here’s some choice selections: (redundant?)


Youtube Link

Youtube Link
Sorry the camera moves sometimes. I’m not as good as Pete. I have to dance; I can’t help it.

One thing I noticed is that Blake is becoming less and less important. And I know that’s a big part of the tension that’s been going on with them on stage and in the studio. Allegedly he’s way jealous of her recent solo successes, and it really shows. He had his back turned to her for half the set! And he sang two of his songs, Ripcord and his new one, Dreamworld, his best two for sure, but besides that, he just played his guitar, didn’t talk or interact with the audience or the rest of the band or anything. He could have been anyone. Any local Detroit guitarist-for-hire. It was really kind of weird. And kinda sad. He’s usually more animated. I fear they might break up.

It was a great set—they played songs off every album. My one complaint was that they didn’t play Under the Blacklight, this new album’s title track. When we bumped into Jenny once more after the little acoustic show, I had asked her when in the set she’d be playing it, hoping to tape it. She said they hadn’t worked it all out yet. I figured she just meant the set list, not the actual song. After all, that song’s simple! Genius in its simplicity! Like a good old-fashioned Weezer single! So that was too bad, because that song is amazing. But everything else was great. Although she skipped out on two of the songs in the encore—I swiped up the set list, of course, and noticed that they had written down a 3-song encore…but she waved a final goodbye after just one (Does He Love You?). Was she pissy? Annoyed with Blake? Unimpressed by the crowd’s applause level? Guess we’ll never know.

After the show, we waited outside the tour bus for Jenny, having used the duration of the concert and a couple Budweisers to muster up the courage to ask her to hang out with us. We just wanted to be friends with her. We waited and we waited, but she never showed, and we were sad and discouraged, but I suppose it’s just as well. She’s a fantasy, after all, an icon, a goddess, not meant to walk the same earth as her obnoxious obsessive fans, and just high enough off the ground for us to look up to her and sing along. I guess, for now, that’s what we’ll keep doing.