Friday, April 18, 2008

Rilo Kiley LIVE!


I saw Rilo Kiley at the SF Design Concourse last night, which is located near the Trader Joes/Mars Bar at 8th and Bryant. It was my first show at the venue, which is a little funky - it sort of felt like a warehouse with astroturf carpeting. It's a large space, and was about half full, and about half that crowd were young women who were probably too young to drink. About 2/3rds of the remaining crowd were cuddling couples, and the rest of the audience was made up of single people trying not to throw up on themselves because of all the excessive snuggling.

In rare perfect timing, I arrived exactly as Rilo Kiley came onstage. I don't go to too many shows that are frequented by large numbers of girls/ young women, and the enthusiastic screaming that accompanied everything Jenny Lewis did was new to me.

Speaking of Jenny Lewis, while she remains very fetching, I have to say that standing in a crowd with 1,000 other people who thought she was hot diminished her appeal in my eyes. I've always hated liking things that were popular. Her voice was great, however, and she definitely brings a lot of personality and sex appeal to a band that would otherwise be a bunch of nebbish dudes.

The band sounded pretty good, although it did show that this was the first night of their tour. Jenny fucked up one of the songs and had to start over, and there was a general awkwardness, like a party before people have finished their first drink. The best sounding songs were from their new album, which are more complex and energetic than a lot of their early stuff. After watching Jenny strut her stuff to the pop/R & B of "breakin' up" I wondered if she is due for a pop album soon, reinventing herself as an indie Ashlee simpson or something. They encored with "Portions for Foxes," which was sloppy, but still thrilling to hear Jenny sing "talking leads to touching/and touching leads to sex/ and then their is no mystery left/ cuz I'm bad news/ baby I'm bad news." During the closing chords we rushed outside and caught the first cab that came. It wasn't the best show I've ever seen, and I'm not sure it was quite worth the forty dollars the tickets cost, but whatevs. It beat sitting at home and watching the office. Plus I got to bed by 11:30, so it was perfect for an old fart like me.

Most importantly, we went to Sushi Zone, which was fucking awesome AND cheap.

2 comments:

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