'So fucking beautiful...'
It's just great when a favourite act you've championed on the strength of a smart debut actually comes through and tops it second time around. Get the bunting out, Mother - it's the new Rilo Kiley! The execution of all things is a cracking little record. Though the growth and progression are unmistakable, reallyrather is happy to report that the band's singular, quirky indie-rocking charm has survived intact. A distinctly more cohesive set than Take offs and landings, the strokes are also less broad (trumpet begone!) and the compositions are a bit more focused than, say, the glorious sprawl of Pictures of success.
A number like Spectacular views, with it's skidding riffs and tumbling drums, is as succinct and crisply rocking a statement of intent as you could wish. That it's the last track on the album and not the opener points up the difference between RK's idiosyncratic approach and that of someone like Florida's The Rocking Horse Winner. Not entirely dissimilar but way more conventionally-shaped, it's hard to believe there was much debate in that camp over where to place the mighty Orange blossom in the running order of this year's superficially terrific album, Horizon. Demonstrating how RK's sound has moved on, TEOAT actually kicks off with The good that won't come out, a great combination of The Mendoza Line, Unwed Sailor and Bontempi beatbox. The classic indie chime of Paint's peeling briefly breaks into what passes for a Rilo Kiley roar, a few more bars of which would've been most acceptable.
Unaccountably, not everyone is won over by the sing-song, almost nursery rhyme-like tendency of Jenny Lewis' vocal & melodies. To this listener their inherent deliciousness is further enhanced when carrying lines like
Then we'll murder what matters to you and move on to your neighbours and kids. Crush all hopes of happiness with disease...
from the title track. Her style also heightens the impact of the occasional strategically deployed F-word, as in A better son/daughter. (Never ones to be hidebound by hackneyed conventions like rhyming and stuff, this song also makes a decent case for the redundancy of punctuation.) The pedal steel/banjo of Saddle Creek Records mainstay Mike Mogis grace several numbers but oddly not those with the most twangish undertones, Capturing moods and the joyous acoustic singalong With arms outstretched.
So, top tunes, diverting prose, ripping guitars and J-J-Jenny Lewis - some kind of nirvana for sweet-toothed indie rock types, surely?!

It must be a tad frustrating if you're up there on stage throwing down numbers which positively shout 'audience participation', only to be faced with a few nodding heads and tapping feet. To the cosy Brixton boho den that is The Windmill on Sunday night for a zinging session from The Vessels before 60-or so coolly inert Americana buffs. Maybe it was asking a bit much for such a gathering to join in the throaty roar of Hey hey or Delight's rousing coda, or indeed to start flinging themselves about to the effervescent Motown romp that is 31st floor. Will it ever happen for Paul Cook and the band? Well, as anyone who's got the debut album knows, there's so far not a duff tune in the bag and the couple of new ones heard on Sunday (When it all comes down - ?) more than held their own. It wouldn't be hard to imagine someone like Lindsay Buckingham, or Macca even, tipping a hat to their neat, melodically robust compositions. Grand Drive have signed them up to open their UK shows this month. Haven't heard their new album but on the strength of Sunday's show, it strikes this blog as a generous and possibly foolhardy gesture...