Well it seems like everyone's doing a music-related piece lately... i'd like to say i've been planning to do this one for a couple weeks and didn't get around to it, but i guess that would sound like a lie....
My cousin Tommy always shows me all kinds of bands i've never heard of or didn't realize i'd never heard whenever i go to maryland to visit him and my aunt, uncle, and other cousin (Angie).... 2 times ago when i was down there for Angie's wedding, he had briefly exposed me to the band Rilo Kiley... and I really dug them immediately. And then he didn't really have time to make a compilation and i came back to michigan and promptly forgot them (mostly cause I couldn't remember the name)
The key members of the band are Jenny Lewis and Blake Soper. They were both child actors and in 1999 they formed this band. (Jenny Lewis played Kristin in Pleasantville (if you want a more recent acting appearance....))
Now, i was back in maryland this past october and Tommy reintroduced me to the band... since then I've really gotten into them a lot... something he said to me really stuck tho... he said, "If they get 4 or 5 more albums out, they could be the next Beatles." At first you may assume he meant that based on the way they sound, and occassionally you can hear a bit of a beatles influence in some of their songs (actually the one linked below has a very george harrison influenced guitar riff throughout) but, knowing him, i know this is not at all what he meant. What he was getting at was the way the beatles had taken a style of music that everyone was doing and made it into something completely unique that could be set apart as a genre all its own. As big as the rolling stones got you never really hear anyone say "hey, that's stonesesque!" Sure, they were a huge band and you know them when you hear them, and, of course, they have influenced bands, but the beatles seemed to bring about a way of thinking about music that runs throughout their entire career as a band.... the music has a life of its own, breathed into it by the writing and the chemistry of the performers as they played what was written that you can feel even when someone else plays them... The construction of the melodies and harmonies and all the little simple things they put in to every song to create something more than just a rock song... They would merge styles of music together, and weave them into something that you could only say is the beatles.
This is what Tommy meant when he said Rilo Kiley could be the next Beatles, I think... if you listen to an album's worth of their stuff (take a mixture of stuff from any of their albums), you can get a picture of what he was talking about, and the more I listen to them, I think i agree... we all know this alternative style that has so dominated and murdered the idea behind rock music... Sure there's a lot of good stuff, but so much garbage.. and, this is true of any genre, natch, but this particular style is lost within itself.
Rilo Kiley is like the beatles in that they have taken the style of music of this time and transformed it into something beautiful, a signature style that is like the kind of stuff we like, but different so that it always feels fresh... That's what the Beatles did for me, I mean i've been listening to them for as long as i can remember, and no matter how many times i listen to any given song, it still feels new to me... Rilo kiley feels the same... not necessarily always innovative, and not necessarily pushing any envelopes, not even necessarily revolutionizing anything in particular, but constantly renewing itself...
also, i love this chick's voice...
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