On a similar note, listening to Rilo Kiley kind of gave me a crush on Jenny Lewis, like everyone (for some reason almost all my celebrity crushes and none of my meatspace ones have been on redheads) which was mostly just “pretty girl… singing pretty words!”

And what dispelled that was first, living around Echo Park for a while I’d occasionally run across Jenny and Blake in normal life, and you realize they’re both kind of plain, it’s just for shows and shoots she pretties herself up and he uglies himself up

(also I used the bathroom after her once at, what, Casbah Cafe?, and oh god she stunk the place up, that’s a cute way to have someone humanized for you)

And second, listening to their side (well, by that time main I guess) projects - The Elected and Jenny’s stuff with The Watson Twins and realizing, from experiencing their songwriting styles in isolation, the Jenny lyrics I really loved had actually been Blake lyrics

(that’s something, looking back at it you realize that a lot of their songs were one of them singing the other one’s words about their shortcomings as lovers, that must have been a strain - they really were our generation’s Fleetwood Mac)

Also: the current Swedish wave as a revival of the producer-auteur pop tradition that was eclipsed by the one-two combo of The Beatles and singer-songwriter folk-gone-electric, blah blah rockist cult of authenticity blah blah Phil Spector, blah blah Motown, I can’t be arsed to write it out

Actually, in general Red is pretty heavily channeling the Silverlake sound of a few years ago, back when I was hitting up Spaceland on the regular. I definitely notice some Submarines in there too. Combined with the lyrics and the shift in her media persona, that’s actually a pretty interesting subtext, that this is the album where she fully abandons Nashville in favor of LA.

Which is a great riff from which to queue a post.

This one is maybe a replay from the livejournal but youre impatient kiddies aren’t you.

The Wizard (1989) is pretty much the key to the hipster version of the American Dream, presenting the two main variations:

A) A talent you exhibited in elementary school, something at which you were the best among the 30-120 kids you associated with, will turn out to be a world-class talent and you will be rewarded accordingly

B) You have no such talent, but you will hang out with those that do, be cool, and end up with a younger version of Jenny Lewis