Jenny Lewis - ‘The Voyager’ Reviewed
Few albums have climbed into my brain and nestled in there recently like this one has. The pop-rock tag puts you off at first, then the glittery album cover and the bubbly opening… but before long you’re all in. Jenny Lewis is so good a songwriter that she could easily coast by on just-good-enough recordings. Instead we’re treated to what might be the best thing she’s ever done (post-Rilo Kiley anyway).
That band, the indie favourites that they were, officially broke up as Lewis was in the process of writing this album. Then her father passed away. Every serious artist tries to cram all their personal troubles down our throat as they attempt to sell whatever vanity project they’re hocking on us next so that we’ll all believe that this one is “truly from the heart” or whatever. Jenny Lewis’ ‘The Voyager’ has real emotion and experience behind it, but instead of dwelling on that for a clichéd press tour, she channels it into something new and invigorating and hopeful. Occasionally her lyrics get a little too personal to the point of isolating the audience (like talking directly to her boyfriend about how she’s not expecting him to propose on ‘Aloha & The Three Johns’), yet even then the melodies are so strong that you really don’t care.
LA power pop. That’s not a genre which is gonna draw in too many purists. Except that genres are just marketing schemes to slice and dice us consumers up into deliberately constructed groups and imagined identities which they can then target again to sell us more of their crap. Oh, you like The Doors? Well it must be your lucky day coz we’ve actually got a special on leather pants and heroin! There are only two types of music in reality, and they are ‘good stuff’ and ‘stuff I don’t like’ and they change drastically from person to person. Jenny Lewis writes good songs. Like, really good songs. That’s all that matters. Ryan Adams boards the Voyager as a producer and that gives you a much better idea of the sound to expect. Open and large, with drawling guitars, yet still somehow intimate. Oh, and Beck shows up too to play producer on ‘Just One of the Guys’. If nothing else, you can’t doubt the taste.
‘Head Underwater’ takes a little time to set the scene, but by the end it’s all joyous and profound. It’s sorta the story of the whole album as Lewis channels her grief and perceived lack of direction (without the safety net of Rilo Kiley) into something life affirming. Following that, ‘She’s Not Me’ goes in wonderfully Motown direction. If Smokey Robinson was a 38 year old red-headed woman (Smokette?), this is what I hope he’d sound like. The song itself deals with seeing a former partner with another senorita (“Heard she’s having your baby…”), but then it drops into an apologetic bridge where she takes all credit for the breakup and the cheating. It’s not really what you expect to hear from a song written by a woman. It’s usually the lusty male who does the screwing around. “Remember the night I destroyed it all/When I told you I cheated, and you punched through the drywall, I took you for granted, when you were all that I needed” – cue guitar solo. You wouldn’t have thought a cheating song would make for a feminist statement.
Speaking of which, let's hit track three. ‘Just One of the Guys’ has Beck’s fingerprints all over it. Those drums may as well be sampled from ‘Morning Phase’. The song tackles that whole ‘women in rock’ thing as well as anyone has for a while. Is she a female musician, or a musician who happens to be female. Well, clearly the second but that’s not gonna stop people from waving their own judgement sticks (not a euphemism, btw, just a regular ol’ metaphor). “There’s only one difference between you and me/When I look at myself all I can see/I’m just another lady without a baby”. The video’s gotten plenty of attraction for getting Anne Hathaway, Brie Larson and Kristen Stewart in drag.
Jenny Lewis has such a great voice but she never overdoes it, instead coming off as laconic at times, sultry at others and it’s always at the right moments. As a former child actress, she knows how to sell emotion. Plus she was really funny on Comedy Bang Bang earlier in the year. ‘Slippery Slopes’ is pure Ryan Adams-sounding with a lilting melody over a bed of layered power chords, while ‘The New You’ gets a little country rock and ‘Aloha & The Three Johns’ is travelling band song set on a holiday to Hawaii.
The one I really wanna talk about is ‘Late Bloomer’. Not only the best of a powerful bunch, it’s a rare breed of song that sounds instantly timeless. I hope this doesn’t sound pretentious, but I’d call it Dylanesque. Think ‘Tangled Up in Blue’. It’s a folksy coming of age story told in the first person that is so immediately vivid and sprawling that it might as well be a full-length novel for all it seems to pack in. Or a feature film captured in four-line verses. Even the pauses seem to tell a tale. I’m not gonna begin to describe the plot as there’s no way I could do it justice. It’s just so good.
Following that track is a striding Fleetwood Mac-ky number which tackles head on the death of her father. ‘You Can’t Outrun Em’ it’s called. I’m not sure how many times I’ve listened to this album but it’s a good sign when every riff and melody sounds familiar like you’ve heard it 1000 times on the radio. ‘The New You’ is probably the weakest of the pack. There are some great lyrics in there but more swings and misses than homeruns (as opposed to a song like ‘Late Bloomer’ where not a word feels out of place).
Ah, but she sure does finish strong. ‘Love U Forever’ must be amazing in concert. It does the quiet/loud, light/dark thing so well, with a thumping baseline and some clever word play. Not sure about the Prince-style spelling, granted. Singing over a wailing, distorted guitar solo though, hell yes.
And to close things off it’s the title track. With all the strings this one definitely sounded out of place on soundcloud when I first heard it. As an album closer, it works much better. I don’t think Jenny Lewis has ever sung better than on this track, and the writing is all cosmic-folk-pop. “The voyager’s in every boy and girl/If you wanna get to Heaven, get out of this world”. Do you need to know what that means to enjoy it? Not really. Inter-dimensional enlightenment or something, you can make up your own mind.
On the whole it’s an album that probably takes a couple of listens before you realise how much you like it, and before you’re able to appreciate it beyond the sunny guitar pop level it’s presented on. At once it can be both sophisticated and strangely goofy, with plenty of subtle humour in amongst it all. I know I keep coming back to that one track, but ‘Late Bloomer’ just sounds so goddamned profound. I’ve had it stuck in my head all week and I hope it never leaves. It’s the same effect that the best short stories all have. Jenny Lewis sure has come a long way since ‘Troop Beverley Hills’.