A six year absence needs explaining, particularly if you’re Jenny Lewis. Both with Rilo Kiley and as a solo artist, she’s meant a lot to a lot of people and the gap between ‘Acid Tongue’ and ‘The Voyager’ is one that seemed as though it might go on forever. Well, it didn't. She's back, with an album that confronts a troubled time with her inimitable wit and candour.
This is a record about going forward that’s rooted in the past. It’s packed with anecdotes, travel imagery and charm and runs on west coast melodies, Tom Petty and Stevie Nicks. Like so much of Lewis’s previous work, though, its outwardly sunny disposition masks a troubled heart.
In recent years she has fought insomnia, dealt with the death of her father and struck out on her own full-time following the dissolution of RiloKiley. In terms of anchors, that last one is important when taking on ‘The Voyager’.
Lewis’s solo career has displayed her chameleon tendencies, bouncing from the folk of ‘Rabbit Fur Coat’ to the brittle pop-soul of ‘Acid Tongue’, but here she has a vehicle that suits her far better than first appearances might have suggested.
Drivetime pop-rock isn’t new or, almost 40 years on from the Heartbreakers’ first ride, particularly relevant but here, in the hands of Lewis and her select collaborators, it fits on both a musical and thematic level.
The stories are self-effacing, sometimes spiteful, sometimes warm and often deeply bittersweet, while Ryan Adams’ guiding hand is a positive. There’s plenty of him weaved into the record’s grab bag approach to Americana and he, as an artist with a similar passion for hopping into bed with one rock archetype at a time, has helped Lewis to inhabit this new, jumpsuit-wearing world entirely.
Slippery Slopes, in particular, is a neat assimilation of their styles, with its Halloweenhead guitar chug underscoring a confessional lyric that intertwines adultery with all-consuming loneliness. Similar feelings bleed from She’s Not Me, which has an intoxicating string break at its heart and a broken relationship on its mind.
The idea of reconciling past and future, meanwhile, rears its head only a couple of minutes in. “I never thought I would ever be here,” Lewis sings on Head Underwater, the opening song. “Looking out on my life as if there was no there there.” On Just One Of The Guys, Lewis spins life on the road, personal hopes and outside pressures into one timeless lyric: “There’s only one difference between you and me. When I look at myself all I can see, I’m just another lady without a baby.”
Late Bloomer, meanwhile, with Nancy from Boston and its rolling cast of characters, is the best of the album’s narrative pieces, with youthful rebellion and infatuation beautifully illustrated. Aloha & The Three Johns is far from its equal but still possesses one of the record’s gilt-edged images: “If there’s no ring I will have to say goodbye. Nah, I’m just playing John, I look terrible in white. You better hide the weed ‘cos the maid is at the door, and I can see a john getting a handjob on the balcony below.”
The lyrical sleight of hand never masks the overriding sense of acceptance and drive to overcome, though. There are pleasures here both simple and complex, with Lewis’s songwriting and one-two partnership with Adams bolstered by a journey with its share of twists. It’s one worth taking.
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