Oh, Rilo Kiley. I had such high hopes and low expectations for your new album, and what do you do but throw me a curveball and make it sing? As I'd anticipated (going by what I'd heard of the last one, and by the first single "The Moneymaker"), it's Rilo Kiley gone pop, but what I hadn't factored in is that the result would still sound so much like, well, like Rilo Kiley, which means that when all's said and done, though it has neither the alt-rock-country scathe and edge of The Execution of All Things nor any individual moments as glorious as "Portions for Foxes", Under the Blacklight is still hella neat. For mine, the best of what the record does have are the disco-y "Breakin' Up", the funked-up "Dejalo" and (my favourite) the old-fashioned singalong of "15".
It seems that Rilo Kiley's increasingly all about Jenny Lewis - which is no bad thing, of course, though the band is strong enough to feature in its own right (as it did more prominently on Execution) and Blake Sennett is a good low-key songwriter in his own right (here, his "Dreamworld", right in the middle of the album, sets off everything else well). I am interested to see what her next step is.
