There was a time when any artist affiliated with Bright Eyes would warrant a guaranteed CD purchase from me. This brought me rather happily to The Faint, Two Gallants, Willy Mason and M Ward, but at the same time it also meant that I have endured Rilo Kiley live – which is less than cool. To me, they have a very bland, generic sound, and as a frontwoman JENNY LEWIS is functional at best. Which really didn’t make me relish the prospect of reviewing her second solo album, but I’ve been proven wrong on my instincts so many times in the past that I vowed to keep an open mind with this one.
‘Acid Tongue’ is a much more compelling album than I believed it could be. It’s not strictly a solo album as she enlists a cacophony of collaborators to join her on these eleven tracks, most notably Elvis Costello on ‘Carpetbaggers,’ but to just lay credit to those who have joined her in this venture would be a little unfair. Vocally, Jenny Lewis has surprised me greatly.
‘Black Sand’ sounds like a Scout Niblett song and doesn’t suffer from the comparison. It’s a classically sung modern pop ballad, full of a raw emotion I had been led not to expect.
‘Pretty Bird’ is a modern country ballad, a fragile voice over some rather moody guitars. It’s a simple concept but it works very well. It’s at times like this that you can lose yourself in the music. There’s soul dripping through it, and it screams to be watched live, sat down, in a dark but atmospheric club.
There is a strength in these songs that has failed to appear in her Rilo Kiley outings. This album is country-based, and that runs through the majority of the songs; the interest comes in where she takes them – which is in many areas. There’s the gospel undertones to the Dolly Parton fuelled ‘Acid Tongue’ sitting side by side with the Natalie Imbruglia goes rockabilly ‘See Fernando.’ There’s certainly a definitive sound to the album, and this gives you the option to enjoy at least some of the songs. ‘Carpetbaggers’ would have sounded terrible but fitting on the Conor Oberst solo album, but sung here, it sounds like a traditional number sung well. It’s a truly unusual duet, good-natured and a little off kilter; it sounds like The Kills go country.
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There’s a quirk in there; one seen in Kate Bush and Tori Amos, but with all the power and gusto of some of the current more remarkable female singers. It’s not quite unique, but it’s certainly different. This is finely displayed on ‘Jack Killed Mom,’ a dark and dramatic tale, flitting from the story-telling verses to the big jazz-hands chorus, into a male spoken word monologue, before bowing out with a retro-girl group finale. It’s country-jazz-classic r’n’b-soul, and is an album highlight.
Some lyrics are laboured and repeated too often - like ‘Badman’s World,’ which sounds like a Flake advert - and some songs seem incredibly dull and pointless. Nearly nine minute epic ‘The Next Messiah’ starts well as a country standard, but degenerates into some sort of tedious mid-tempo redneck jam that just doesn’t seem to quit; by the seventh minute and the song faltering into some sort of AOR duet, you’re pretty much begging for mercy. It’s about four songs merged into one, but only the first part is of any interest. ‘Godspeed’ is a tired yo’ man’s a bad-ass kind of lament, and lacks the real emotion of some of the earlier ballads. It’s not a huge stretch to imagine Westlife covering this. ‘Sing a Song’ is somewhere between a nursery rhyme and a hymn, and for that it is a poor album closer.
But there are others on here that make me severely question my doubts. It wouldn’t be fair to call this album a triumph, but it’s much better than I thought it could be, and it earmarks Lewis as a voice to be reckoned with. It’s an album full of potential, and I never expected to say that. Whilst my interest in Conor Oberst is currently faltering, another one of his friends has definitely won some enthusiasm.
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