Zenarchery

Rilo Kiley is touring North America. I mention this only so that I can point out that, despite having heard Rilo Kiley probably a half-dozen times, I can never remember what they sound like. Their music falls off my brain like water off Teflon.

Despite this fact, I know a lot about Rilo Kiley the band. I know that Jenny Lewis and Blake Sennett were both child actors, that they had a relationship at some point, and that Jenny Lewis has dated every sensitive guy who fronts an indie band. (Or has some kind of non-sexual deep emotional relationship with them — Ben Gibbard, represent!) I know there’s a lot of tension in the band about how Jenny Lewis is the focus of every media article on the group.

I know this because these facts are plastered over every possible surface in the music media. I know this because Spin (which, for various reasons, I have a subscription to) had an entire cover story dedicated to the band.

Nowhere in this story is there any actual discussion of the band’s music, or even a description of what they sound like. In fact, almost none of the stories I come across on Pitchforkmedia or any other music media outlet have anything to do with Rilo Kiley’s music. It’s all about…well…who’s shagging who in the band. (Or who Jenny Lewis is shagging that’s not in the band, but in another band, or is Conor Oberst, or is a pretty singer-songwriter dude who might someday be Conor Oberst.)

Now, I know enough about the music industry to know that this is not accidental. Every time I read an interview with these people, they seem quite willing to discuss their personal lives. (They’re from Los Angeles, though, so that makes sense. Everyone in Los Angeles is willing to discuss their personal lives with random strangers. Even non-famous people.) Somewhere, some marketing person or PR person is figuring out how to keep Jenny Lewis on the cover of every music magazine, from Filter to Spin to The Fader to Electronic Noise Made By Retards From Poland Quarterly. (I just made that up, of course, but I wish I hadn’t. I wish that was a real magazine. I would hella buy that magazine, yo.)

And apparently, this is not done by making memorable music. I dunno — I never heard that solo album she did, and maybe it was awesome. But I’m pretty good at cataloging music in my head, and the fact that I still couldn’t tell you if Song X was by Rilo Kiley says something, though I can tell you that Song Y was inspired by Indie Singer Guy Z’s brief relationship with Jenny Lewis. The same is not true of, say, Radiohead, or even Simian Mobile Disco, or other lovely contemporaries of Lewis like Leslie Feist or Emily Haines.

Again, the whole point is that, at some level, they are allowing this to happen. It’s a lot easier to control your public persona than you might think. Anybody know who Leslie Feist’s been dating? Me neither, probably because she won’t talk about it in interviews. At least, not in the interviews I’ve read, which is a pretty fair selection. I’m more likely to read an interview with Feist than with Rilo Kiley, because I can remember what Feist sounds like. (I really like Feist and I’m glad she’s out there. Even though I’m not a huge fan of every song, I love many of them, and I’m even happy about the ones I don’t like as much just being in the world. Leslie Feist, you’ve got my vote!)

None of this has anything to do with actual music, of course. And maybe Rilo Kiley is really awesome, and I just haven’t had enough exposure to them to realize how awesome they really are.

But I’m deeply suspicious of a band who seems more willing to talk in public about their fractally convoluted relationships than the music they make. That really strikes me as being born more of a desire to be famous than to be a great musician. It’s got this brimstone whiff of caring way too much about your public image. And I do mistrust that in musicians, very much so, because it suggests where your priorities really lie.

It all reminds me of all the horseshit surrounding Fleetwood Mac in the 1970s, all the hype about who Stevie Nicks was humping every week…which is why, I think, I keep hearing Rilo Kiley referred to as “the new Fleetwood Mac”.

Or maybe they just sound like Fleetwood Mac. I dunno. I can’t remember.

(To balance my shit-talking, I should point out that I don’t really mind looking at Jenny Lewis on album covers. I would rather look at Jenny Lewis than Thom Yorke, even though I’d probably enjoy a conversation with Yorke a bit more. But Jenny Lewis is very pretty.)

I’m reviewing Nine Inch Nails’ new album of instrumental music Ghosts I-IV for CityLife this week, but I’ll just pop in here and suggest you pay the $5 to buy it from Reznor’s site. If you like ambient music or Nine Inch Nails, this is the good stuff.

I’ve got more to say about this album — and how Reznor’s distribution for it is making me think about my own album — but I’ll save that for later.

There’s a bit in a comics script I’m working on, set in the late 1920s, where my protagonist is staring moodily down at a darkened Texas town from his hotel room. On the radio is playing a lonesome cowboy version of the old murder ballad “Down In The Willow Garden”, which you may remember from Raising Arizona. It’s one of the finest moments in the Coen brothers’ filmography, Holly Hunter singing this mournful tune to soothe her kidnapped baby, because it’s obviously the prettiest song she knows. The song’s melody is a lietmotif throughout that film’s excellent score.

Anyway, here’s the Everly Brothers doing the song from their album Songs Our Daddy Taught Us. Even though it came out some thirty years after my story takes place, in my head, this is what I hear, scratchy and lo-fi, on Bailey Chandler’s radio, playing softly into the warm Texas night.

…when somebody does “Hallelujah” on American Idol.

For those of you who really love this song and want more like it, may I recommend you check out Leonard Cohen’s early albums? They are depressing, as you’ll often hear critics point out…but there are moments of absolute beauty on them. “Suzanne” has never stopped being a lovely song. Neither has “Chelsea Hotel #2”, which is about Cohen’s brief affair with Janis Joplin, and which may be the most honest love song of all time:

I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel You were famous, your heart was a legend You told me again you preferred handsome men But for me you would make an exception And clenching your fists for the ones like us Who are oppressed by the figures of beauty You fixed yourself, you said ‘Well, never mind ‘We are ugly but we have the music’

And “Famous Blue Raincoat”, which is sad and slow and haunting, and which may be one of the most perfectly written songs ever. On later albums, you can find “Coming Back To You”, “If It Be Your Will”, and “Anthem”, which is a glorious song.

Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack, a crack in everything That’s how the light gets in

Also, check out John Cale’s version of “Hallelujah”, which is the version Jeff Buckley was actually covering, not the original.

Finally — Nick Drake’s “Northern Sky”, which always reminds me of both Buckley and Cohen, and has a similar emotional effect on me as “Hallelujah”.

Oh, I almost forgot Cohen’s “Dance Me To The End Of Love”, which is one of the sexiest songs ever written.

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin Dance me through the panic ’til I’m gathered safely in Touch me with your naked hand or touch me with your glove And dance me to the end of love

My favorite version is the one by a singer named Kate Gibson from the soundtrack to the Jim Cameron film Strange Days, which is a great compilation anyway and worth buying, if for nothing more than the gorgeous song “Fall In The Light” by Lori Carson and Graeme Revell.

My favorite Leonard Cohen song, though, is still probably “Waiting For The Miracle”. I’ll record that some day. It has one of my favorite lyrics ever:

I dreamed about you, baby It was just the other night Most of you was naked Ah, but some of you was light The sands of time were falling From your fingers and your thumb And you were waiting for the miracle to come

That’s how you do duende, kids. (Tom Robbins once said that “nobody says the word ‘naked’ as nakedly as Leonard Cohen”, and he’s goddamn right.)

Finally, if you really want to break your own heart, listen to Jeff Buckley’s cover of Porter Wagoner’s “Satisfied Mind”, recorded shortly before his death. I’ve heard they played this at his funeral…and man, if I’d been there and known him, I don’t think I could have handled that.

Good stuff.

(Random information: I nodded at “Suzanne” in my song “When You Get Here”. The original line goes “She shows you where to look amidst the garbage and the flowers” and my line was “Can you find me here amidst the garbage bins and singles bars?” Okay, not very similar, but Cohen was in my head when I wrote that line.)

(Also, I’ve got to give a big shoutout to Summer Johnson, who turned me on to both Jeff Buckley and Leonard Cohen, amongst some other amazing music, back in the day. Thanks, babe. Every time I hear “Chelsea Hotel #2” I think of our little room and the breeze blowing through it.)