THE YOUNG WOMAN that brought three thousand people together in a hot and sticky theatre is only smiling goodnaturedly when she struts out on stage. She carries a definitive swagger, a southern charm with attitude, a sadness in her smile betraying some sorrow from a time passed but not quite gone. In her step there is a hop and a swagger but it feels authentic, real, real like her prescence on stage feels authentic and real. From behind a curtain of red bangs she peers out at the crowd: effortlessly sweet, excitable, gingerspicy. She's not the bad girl, never was - she sports a Dylan t-shirt and tight blue jeans like it was the outfit she was born in, pays homage to the city and her opening act without a hint haughty Hollywood in her voice.
"Hello ya'll," she'll say, with a highpitched tang of the South.
How this California girl can sing and strut like a homegrown Dixie honey - no one knows. What they know is this: she can make them feel.
You can plug yourself into an iPod or set yourself down in front of a television set and be properly moved and have a worthwhile musical experience. It will be evocative, sublime, transcendent. It will be everything that art can be and you will be happy. It will not even come close to approximating a live performance.
The woman on stage may suspect this. She may understand, in however rudimentary a form, that she has an effect on her audience that moves beyond the realm of audio stimulation. But if she has this understanding she betrays none of it. You can look into her eyes from twenty feet away and see nothing but a plain honesty, a kind of genuine attitude that has more to do with her success than lyrics or sound arrangements ever could. It is the ultimate demonstration of the power of style over content - except that her content's not exactly slouching, either.
She does not try to be anything or anyone. She just is. She exudes an air so genuine that you have difficulty avoiding awe of her. Perhaps it would not be so striking, so heartbreaking, if you were not surrounded day in and day out by men and women, tasks and assignments, pasttimes and pursuits, of a supremely less honest demeanor. But when she sings, when she takes the microphone playfully in her hand and launches into a ballad born of the land, it is as if none of that ever existed.
When the main event of the show comes, the rest of the band retreats into the shadows and the theatre grows quiet. It is as if they knew that this moment had been coming and respectfully fall into silence. The opening chords of 'Silver Lining' hush the remaining voices. Around her, the rest of the theatre is slowly melting away - the ancient chipped-stone arches, the red and green strobes, the torn wainscoting on the far walls, the massive cross-sected throb of homo-sapien - and when she begins to sing, it is truly gone. She stands at the end of a tunnel of black, like in a dream, singing across space and time to you and only you. In an instant, with everything boiled down to its simplest quality, with all trivialities of what those sad little people like to call the 'real' world long forgotten, you can feel the meaning of her words without any conjuring on your own behalf. Have you ever felt so wicked, as when you willed your love to die? Her music is infinitely applicable - anyone who's ever yearned for something deeper, ever been in love, ever been homesick, ever wondered where there place in the world was, has a line in her song.
That, there, is music at its best, at its most powerful. When it functions on a level just as deep as a moving work of literature, just as effective and immediate as a psychadelic. But with music you don't do anything, you give yourself over, you're in the hands of your performer. The more you give up the more you will experience. It's not about letting your body go in dance, but about letting your soul go, about trusting the Great Nowhere to take you to a Great Somewhere. Jenny Lewis is but a guide through those desert places, if only you trust yourself enough to take the trip.
ON THE PRACTICAL SIDE her set ran roughly something like this:
See Fernando
You are What You Love
Pretty Bird
Silver Lining
Carpetbagger
Bad Man's World
Happy
Rise Up With Fists
Handle With Care (Traveling Wilburys cover)
Acid Tongue
The Next Messiah
Born Secular
The best of which was easily 'Silver Lining' - an absolutley stunning performance. When she sang the rest of the stage around her really did seem to melt away until there was nothing left but just her and her voice and her words and her feelings and you knew what she said to be true by something almost primal deep inside of you. I took no drugs or alcohol before heading over to the Trocadero, by the way, and did not even go down to South Street (Dixie) to drop acid on my tongue. My mind was completely clear - as clear as it's going to be after a hard thirteen mile run.
'Born Secular' was also outstanding and very noteworthy, as were 'Happy' and 'Bad Man's World'. Not that the others were not outstanding (she didn't sing a single song that I didn't thoroughly enjoy except for maybe 'The Next Messiah' - I don't think i could say that about any other artist today), but these four were transcendent.
Song of the Day: Sorry, but you can't have a review of a Jenny Lewis concert without having a Jenny Lewis number as the song of the day (I do apologize for two straight posts with two straight JL songs of the day). This particular song I was not a huge fan of at first - I just didn't think it sounded very good. But I wasn't appreciating it. The backing vocals are expertly used - perhaps better than in any other song penned by her with the exception of 'Acid Tongue' itself.
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