Media Review

Jenny Lewis With The Watson Twins

Rabbit Fur Coat (CD)

Team Love
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Overall Rating:

7.0

Music Quality: 7.0

Production: 7.0

Originality: 5.5

"Rabbit Fur Coat," one of the first albums released on labelmate Conor Obert's label Team Love, marks the second side project by a member of Rilo Kiley. Rilo's first branching was seen when Blake Sennett released "Me First" under the Elected moniker in early 2004. Unfortunately for Jenny, her side project doesn't fare as well as her bandmate's.

The best way to describe "Rabbit Fur Coat" would be to take the alternative country feel of "More Adventurous" and dumb down the song structure a bit, leaving us with a very conventional alt-folk record. The most satisfying constant is Jenny's pipes. She has proven in the past that she can really belt out those notes with the best of them and continues to do so (Rise Up With Fists), while conversely, she can still soften it up in the next track (Happy). The album is simply more boring than anything, using standard folk conventions in each of the songs. It will most likely take you more than two hands to count the amount of I-V7-I progressions here, folks. The LP starts with a great intro, as we hear a beautiful 3-part harmony featuring The Watson Twins, and follows up with a catchy tune, "Big Guns." Unfortunately after that, the album begings to falter. She pays all of the right homages here, as seen in the tune in which M.Ward, Conor Oberst and Ben Gibbard all lend their voices to the Traveling Wilburys tune "Handle With Care", in some sort of contest to see who can ham it up the most. In some sort of wacky coincidence, this ends up being the best track on the album. "Rabbit Fur Coat" takes a serious dip in the middle, only to pick up a bit near the end, finally ending with a reprise of an earlier track, similarly to Rilo's 2001 gem, "Take-Offs & Landings".

I can draw comparisons to 2004's "Change of Living" by The Only Children. It was the only successful project to break out of the emo-pop turned straight rock 'n roll band, The Anniversary. Josh Berwanger headed the project, keeping The Anniversary's drummer and bassist, Christian Jankowski and Jim David, respectively. It was a great folk album, one of the overall best of 2004, coming from a band that was not previously involved in the genre. It showed that a band could create a satisfying foray into the genre without sacrificing their roots. The originality and technicality of Rilo's song structures is nowhere to be found here. Either Jenny is really just dumbing down the songwriting on this one, or it is painfully obvious that Sennett does all of the superior songwriting for Rilo Kiley.

The production is good, although the vocal reverb tends to stand out after repeated listens. The instrumentation explores no new ground, though it doesn't need to. We hear the guitar, piano, bass and drums with the occasional slide guitar or pedal steel. Perhaps they just wanted to stick to their basics on their first release, and there's nothing wrong with that.

This album really feels like it could have been so much more, but instead Jenny and the Twins decided to keep it simple. I look forward to their next release, but first comes The Elected's 2006 record "Sun, Sun, Sun." Will we see another Rilo album before the next Jenny solo album? I hope so.

reviewed by Matt Whittle