By Erik Adams
Special for The State News
As you can read in any rock magazine of note (Spin and Harp, for instance), Rilo Kiley frontwoman Jenny Lewis set out to make her solo debut, a soul album in the vein of 1971's "Gonna Take a Miracle" by Laura Nyro and LaBelle. Somewhere along the line, "Rabbit Fur Coat" got a little less soul and a little more country, but that's not a bad thing.
In fact, it's quite a good thing. Lewis' change of mind is evident from the album's first notes — finger-picked acoustic guitar and bursts of three-part Nashville harmony.
"Run Devil Run" is the sonic equivalent of a roadside sign welcoming listeners to "Rabbit Fur Coat." Down the road, Lewis and Kentucky-born sister act the Watson Twins invite you to join in on the sing-and-clap-along stomp of "Big Guns," the best southern jamboree ever thrown by an indie rocker.
"I've spent hundreds at the track, but I'm not betting on the afterlife," Lewis muses in "Big Guns," a sentiment that echoes throughout the album. "Rise Up With Fists" (the album's stand-out track) explores the relationship between grace and forgiveness, while "The Charging Sky" questions divinities, both spiritual and material.
While Rilo Kiley has raised these difficult issues before, Lewis has never spilled her guts to the extent she does on "Rabbit Fur Coat." The album's title track envisions Lewis' mother as a woman grasping at happiness through earthly riches, eventually achieved by dropping her daughter in the tempestuous waters of child-stardom (you may recall Lewis' turns in "Troop Beverly Hills" and "The Wizard"). Try as she might to fight it, in the end Lewis has inherited her mother's feistiness along with her taste in fur outerwear.
At times, "Rabbit Fur Coat" sounds like Lewis made a Rilo Kiley album, handed it off to co-producers M. Ward (who joins Lewis, Death Cab for Cutie's Ben Gibbard and Bright Eyes' Conor Oberst for a cover of the Traveling Wilburys' "Handle With Care") and Mike Mogis, who upped the twang level to 11. This makes for some great after-hours ballads ("Happy," "Melt Your Heart"), but also contributes to the album's one major misstep, "You Are What You Love" which could be a cast-off Rilo song.
The "Happy" reprise can also be skipped; the album's true coda is "It Wasn't Me," a slow-burner that has Lewis atoning for and reconsidering her confessions over a sleepy mix of ringing guitars and vibraphone.
"Rabbit Fur Coat" is a product of the Lewis her fans have come to obsess and fawn over. Her voice is elevated by honky-tonk echo and the Watson Twins' angelic harmonizing. The lyrics' confessional nature may sound too specific to some ears, but without that specificity, what would there be to relate to?
"It wasn't me, I wasn't there/That was not my love affair," she coos in "It Wasn't Me." You don't need to make excuses, Jenny. Just keeping making great albums.
