Jenny Lewis, through a cloud of nostalgia
It's been nearly two months since I saw Jenny Lewis at Spaceland. A minute ago I tried to download a photo that showed how beautiful and melancholic she looked. But blogspot refuses to download. You'll have to make do with the image I will masterfully paint using words.
At 6 pm, Thursday night in late June, I stood in line outside Spaceland, reading a zine called "Nostalgia: the Zine for Lame Hipsters"--an ironic title, and thus the only way to get hipsters to read it. My ex-girlfriend (I'll call her X) joined me after she parked. We were buying tickets for our lollygagging friends--Beatriz, and the vegetarian Bacon--but it turned out tickets were not physical tickets; they were happy face stamps. You weren't present, you didn't get in. And then we were two.
Marked with the sign of the happy face, we made it inside. I'll skip the part where X and I waited forever, eating Thai food smuggled in from a local restaurant, enduring a bad opening singer and a cute, queer opening comedian. (She was adorable, actually--I'm sorry she had to put up with angry hipster faces staring at her. Jenny Lewis fans are the big drawback of a Jenny Lewis show; I kid, but kind of don't. I think I'm getting too old to mix with hipster white kids these days.) X, in a fit of exhaustion, actually took off right after Jenny Lewis came out.
So I was alone at a concert, a first for me. It was great, actually. I felt strangely adult, like those divorcees who take vacations alone to Paris to demonstrate that they're totally fine with being alone! It freed me up to listen to the music and voices and to people-watch with abandon.
She opened with the gospel "Run Devil Run," a capella with the Watson Twins, then "The Big Guns," which are the opening cuts to her solo album, Rabbit Fur Coat. You can listen to bits of it here and here. She performed a great set, very similar to the show I saw at the Orpheum Theater in April, and finished with "Born Secular" again.
Here's her signature good-bye: Playing "Born Secular," a piano chord-based song about religion and its absence, Jenny starts out playing a keyboard alone. Gradually her bandmates for the tour join her on their instruments, the song meanders and climaxes, and a bandmate sits down next to her and takes over the piano chords. She stands up, waves, blows a kiss to the crowd, and exits through the red velvet curtain. Slightly cheesy, but simultaneously sweet, like an old friend saying so long. I look forward to seeing Rilo Kiley in their fully formed state again.
Blogger's cooperating again. Here's a close facsimile of what the Spaceland show looked like. Go, retro-country!
At 6 pm, Thursday night in late June, I stood in line outside Spaceland, reading a zine called "Nostalgia: the Zine for Lame Hipsters"--an ironic title, and thus the only way to get hipsters to read it. My ex-girlfriend (I'll call her X) joined me after she parked. We were buying tickets for our lollygagging friends--Beatriz, and the vegetarian Bacon--but it turned out tickets were not physical tickets; they were happy face stamps. You weren't present, you didn't get in. And then we were two.
Marked with the sign of the happy face, we made it inside. I'll skip the part where X and I waited forever, eating Thai food smuggled in from a local restaurant, enduring a bad opening singer and a cute, queer opening comedian. (She was adorable, actually--I'm sorry she had to put up with angry hipster faces staring at her. Jenny Lewis fans are the big drawback of a Jenny Lewis show; I kid, but kind of don't. I think I'm getting too old to mix with hipster white kids these days.) X, in a fit of exhaustion, actually took off right after Jenny Lewis came out.
So I was alone at a concert, a first for me. It was great, actually. I felt strangely adult, like those divorcees who take vacations alone to Paris to demonstrate that they're totally fine with being alone! It freed me up to listen to the music and voices and to people-watch with abandon.
She opened with the gospel "Run Devil Run," a capella with the Watson Twins, then "The Big Guns," which are the opening cuts to her solo album, Rabbit Fur Coat. You can listen to bits of it here and here. She performed a great set, very similar to the show I saw at the Orpheum Theater in April, and finished with "Born Secular" again.
Here's her signature good-bye: Playing "Born Secular," a piano chord-based song about religion and its absence, Jenny starts out playing a keyboard alone. Gradually her bandmates for the tour join her on their instruments, the song meanders and climaxes, and a bandmate sits down next to her and takes over the piano chords. She stands up, waves, blows a kiss to the crowd, and exits through the red velvet curtain. Slightly cheesy, but simultaneously sweet, like an old friend saying so long. I look forward to seeing Rilo Kiley in their fully formed state again.
Blogger's cooperating again. Here's a close facsimile of what the Spaceland show looked like. Go, retro-country!
posted by CC at 8/07/2006
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