Home  Reviews Rilo Kiley - Take Offs and Landings
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Rilo Kiley - Take Offs and Landings |
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Written by Drew
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Thursday, 21 April 2005 |
If we’re going to talk genres, I would call Take Offs and Landings a refreshing bit of west coast Indie/Pop. Of course genres mean something and nothing to everyone at the same time, so I’ll attempt to go a bit further.
Vocalist Jenny Lewis is really the defining element of the Rilo Kiley sound. Since I generally loath female singers, I don’t really have much to compare her to. She has a kind of small voice with maybe a little drawl, but she uses it quite well. Put her voice in a genre?…hmm, maybe country/pop/rock. I hope that is vague enough for you. At least there is no mistaking that the guitar sound on this album is clearly rock. Make that rock with a bit of a classic rock twist. There is plenty of nice gentle clean guitar with some distorted wah wah whammy-ness thrown in for accent and good measure. The drum and bass section doesn’t really stand out to me on this album…which is kind of a good thing. They carry the songs along nicely…sometimes bouncy, sometimes softly and smoothly. A few tracks have some trumpet thrown in, which I think sounds a little obtrusive, but it’s not annoying like ska. Overall the songwriting and lyric writing in particular are quite good on this album. The disk flows nicely from track to track and can be easily enjoyed from start to finish. I really like this CD a lot and wish that music like this would get a little more airplay these days. This album in one word = smooth (that’s lowercase with no exclamation point). This isn’t lounge singing, it’s rock and roll…or was that indie/pop? Rilo Kiley is a little like lablemate Death Cab For Cutie, at least that is what listening to this album puts me in the mood for. If you like DCFC or similar artists, definitely check this album out. |
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