{"id":2446733,"date":"2019-07-25T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-07-25T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=309823"},"modified":"2019-07-25T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-07-25T06:00:00","slug":"review-jenny-lewis-at-belly-up-aspen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/review-jenny-lewis-at-belly-up-aspen\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Jenny Lewis at Belly Up Aspen"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Jenny Lewis brought her \u201cOne the Line\u201d tour to Belly Up Aspen earlier this month.<\/strong>
Andrew Travers<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

It\u2019s not often you go see a rock star in concert hoping to hear the new stuff. We usually want the sonic comfort food of old hits.<\/p>\n

But Jenny Lewis\u2019 tour supporting the new record \u201cOn the Line,\u201d which stopped at Belly Up on July 10, is something different. The new album from the indie rock icon and former Rilo Kiley singer plumbs new depths from Lewis and that feel so vital that they overshadow nostalgia and familiarity of her older catalog.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s a bard of boozy bad decisions, writing in the hard-luck storytelling tradition of alt-country but delivering it all in a genre-hopping style that moves among gospel ballads, rock, some light disco and some hard-edged blues.<\/p>\n

And \u2014 in this show \u2014 she wrapped it all in stylized, subversive showmanship. Lewis came onstage to roars from her fervent fans, in smirking triumph, to Tommy Tutone\u2019s \u201c867-5309\/Jenny,\u201d wearing a form-fitting, gold-sequined and fur-cuffed dress.<\/p>\n

The set showcased nine out of the 11 songs from her new album, arguably the best new record of 2019, in a set list filled out by solo material and Rilo Kiley songs. The new songs included stand-out takes on \u201cHollywood Lawn\u201d and \u201cRed Bull & Hennessey,\u201d \u201cLittle White Dove,\u201d \u201cDogwood\u201d and \u201cParty Clown.\u201d She opened playing stand-up piano \u2014 topped with two retro light-up rotary phones to underscore the \u201con the line\u201d metaphor \u2014 on the mordant new rocker \u201cHeads Gonna Roll.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over the night, she moved between the piano, a stand-up microphone and a raised platform that elevated her high above the heads of the club\u2019s crowd. The stage persona made the bite of the raw, personal songs in \u201cOn the Line\u201d \u2014 written in the wake of her mother\u2019s death and the dissolution of a long-term relationship \u2014 somehow sharper than the recorded versions.<\/p>\n

Lewis doesn\u2019t do raw confessional weepies, this is sad stuff you can dance to (\u201cShe\u2019s Not Me\u201d) and clap along to (\u201cThe Big Guns\u201d) and sing along with (\u201cSilver Lining,\u201d more on that in a bit). And she can command a pin-drop silence from the audience, as she did on the bittersweet, languid crooner \u201cHappy.\u201d On the hymn-like \u201cBorn Secular,\u201d she left the stage so her new five-piece band could take solos.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a rare alchemy in this music, in a song like \u201cDo Si Do,\u201d about dealing with a depressed friend and including lines like \u201cYou ain\u2019t no pharaoh\/Get back on your Paxil,\u201d that look straight at the darkness and greet it with a resigned smile.<\/p>\n

On the beloved Rilo Kiley song \u201cSilver Lining,\u201d Lewis had two false starts and flubbed her lyrics.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not gonna blame the altitude,\u201d she told the crowd. \u201cBut I\u2019m not not.\u201d<\/p>\n

She then offered up the song to the crowd, asking if anybody wanted to sing it. A brave super-fan from the reserved section then joined her onstage to sing it better than anybody could have expected her to. Lewis simply stood back and danced until joining in on the final chorus.<\/p>\n

In another bit of effective crowd participation, on \u201cWith Arms Outstretched\u201d she asked the Belly Up production crew to turn out all the stage lights and asked fans to light her with the flashlights on their cellphones. What might have been a goofy gimmick turned the tail end of the show into a raw and intimate experience that broke down the barriers between audience and artist. No longer was she up there bathed in the professional and planned colors of a rock star, but just a singer telling a story with minimalist notes punctuating it all.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a lot of grief and darkness in these new songs, along with moments of rebirth and light and a reminder that sometimes the best way out is to put on a sparkly dress and laugh about it all.<\/p>\n

atravers@aspentimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jenny Lewis brought her \u201cOne the Line\u201d tour to Belly Up Aspen earlier this month.Andrew Travers It\u2019s not often you go see a rock star in concert hoping to hear the new stuff. We usually want the sonic comfort food of old hits. But Jenny Lewis\u2019 tour supporting the new record \u201cOn the Line,\u201d which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2446733","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-21 23:45:52","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2446733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2446733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2446733\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2446733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2446733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2446733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}