Jenny Lewis charts her own course at Union Transfer
On The Voyager, her first solo album since the breakup of her band Rilo Kiley, Jenny Lewis sings about trying to be "just one of the guys." But at Union Transfer on Tuesday night, she was more like one of a kind, charting her own course without tripping over other people's expectations.
On The Voyager, her first solo album since the breakup of her band Rilo Kiley, Jenny Lewis sings about trying to be "just one of the guys." But at Union Transfer on Tuesday night, she was more like one of a kind, charting her own course without tripping over other people's expectations.
Despite being a former child star and living (horrors!) in Los Angeles, Lewis rose to indie-rock stardom, and doubled down on (performed) authenticity with the Appalachian trappings of her first solo album, 2006's Rabbit Fur Coat. But The Voyager embraces the pomp and gloss of '70s album rock, and Lewis' lyrics don't pretend she has lived an ordinary life.
Pitchfork predictably sniffed at the "tedious self-regard" of a tune such as "Aloha & the Three Johns," in which Lewis' traveling companion smashes a TV set in a Hawaiian hotel. On stage, she drew out the languid coda in which she sings, "We're drinking Cava on the plane," as if to say, "Yeah, and I know my sparkling wines, too." (Even better, The Voyager was released alongside an eponymous wine from a California vineyard.)
In "Aloha," the singer warns her mate that he'd better propose or she's out the door, waiting to see the panicked look on his face before she reveals, "I'm just playing - I look terrible in white." But Lewis, who wryly tugged at her white suit as she sang that line, returned to the subjects of marriage and middle age throughout the show. "When I look at myself, all I can see, I'm just another lady without a baby," she sang, contrasting her ticking biological clock with her aging male peers' waxing interest in "child brides."
After the planned three-song encore, Lewis yielded to the crowd and returned in civilian clothes to play The Voyager's title track, which is about not only life on the road but also the lonely deep-space probe hurtling through the vast emptiness on a one-way trip through uncharted territory. It may be too late for her to come back to Earth, but she's seeing things no one else ever will except through her eyes.