I don’t want you to think I want to interview Jenny Lewis: for one thing, I’ve written so many mean things about the woman I’m scared I’d slip up and say what I really think of her music, and for another, I hate transcribing tapes, so I am more than happy to let Billboard’s Matt Diehl do the heavy lifting while I control v my life away.
Yeah, I loved Jenny back in the day, say twelve years ago circa The Execution Of All Things, but now? i think I an say when they bit the big one, 2007’s Under The Black Light was not very good, the tour was not very good, the two solo albums dragged me, the album with her boyfriend was worse, and the concert that went along with it all was worse of all. But people come back and so after a very good set at Governors Ball and a solid if not spectacular new album (I’ve wanted to review it, but have only a paragraph worth of interest), here is her interview just not by us:
1.“I needed to be free creatively. I recently directed my first video for ‘Just One of the Guys.’ That couldn’t have happened in Rilo Kiley — everyone would be like, ‘We want to direct, too!’ ”
2. It encompasses a grueling period during which Lewis’ father passed away, her band of more than a decade broke up, and she conquered two years of chronic insomnia. “All these things pushed me over the edge. In your mid-30s, you have to take inventory, or you’ll stumble.”
3. “My first memories were of my babysitter, who was a female Elvis impersonator.”
4. “I was always trying to make something different. I felt limited, like I couldn’t rock too hard because it would be like cheating on Rilo Kiley”
5. “(Ryan Adams) got really involved in the songs. He’d say things like, ‘God, I can’t take this campfire bullshit — it’s so fatiguing. Put an E minor in there.’ I’d try it, and it would be the right choice.”
6. “It would be nice to create something that’s healing, “rather than slightly creepy and darkly judgmental!”
Amen to that.
