This next artist is from the Rilo Kiley music tree.
Disc 298 is...Sun, Sun, Sun
Artist: The Elected
Year of Release: 2006
What’s Up With The Cover?: It looks like an old fifties photo of someone's summer cabin on the lake. I like this cover - it is the sort of cover I like to put on my own mixed CDs when I make them. This particular cabin doesn't look too great structurally, with the forefront of the building visibly sagging into the section behind it. The owners might want to call an engineer before moving in.
How I Came To Know It: As noted in the intro, this is via the Rilo Kiley music tree. One half of Rilo Kiley's creative energy comes from Blake Sennett, and "The Elected" are Sennet's side project. His Rilo Kiley partner, Jenny Lewis has done similar side projects, recording solo as well as collaborating with the Watson Twins. Most recently she did a nifty little summer album with her boyfriend Johnathan Rice (Jenny + Johnny).
How It Stacks Up: I only have this one album by The Elected, but if I were to compare it to Rilo Kiley, Jenny Lewis solo, the Watson Twins and Jenny+Johnny, then it would come in last. Sorry, Blake.
Rating: 2 stars
Rilo Kiley is one of the truly great finds in the oughts. If you are familiar with them, you will know they are a whimsical combination of pop music, indie and folk. Catchy melodies and clever lyrics that are dark in the way that pop music can be when it is trying to be good, and not just trying to get on AM radio.
Jenny Lewis is the main singer for Rilo Kiley, but each album also has a couple of songs sung by Blake Sennett. Sennett has a very high voice, kind of like the guy from Belle and Sebastian only more breathy (yes more breathy). The songs always sound like they should be on some British movie soundtrack, where the story follows some awkward kid with a bad haircut through his first experience with love.
Such films have many scenes where the main character kicks stones dejectedly through a park, wishing everyone would just stop asking him to fit in, when he has no desire to do so. He is met at this point by some equally awkward girl in the park. If such scenes are happening in the daytime (either bright ironic sunshine or reinforcing pouring rain is fine) the music you hear in the background wistfully underscoring the boy's mood will be a lot like this album.
It is important to note that if the same scene is happening at night in the snow, there will be no music, or if there is it will not be anything more than the ominous clank of a single piano key. In these cases, you have made a mistake at the video store. You are, in fact, watching a Swedish horror film and the boy is actually meeting a vampire.
Don't feel bad, though - it was an easy mistake to make. The store clerk probably whispered conspiratorially to you, "It's about a boy", and you thought he said "It's 'About A Boy'". An honest mistake. But I digress...
Back to the review. My main problem with "Sun Sun Sun", was that it felt like listening to the one or two Blake Sennett songs on a Rilo Kiley album, but without all the Jenny Lewis stuff. This is not a good thing, as the Sennett songs on Rilo Kiley albums are generally - how can I put this delicately? - inferior.
More specifically, "Sun Sun Sun" is a record full of self-effacing rock songs that aren't good enough to pull off the irony of what they are trying to accomplish. Every song has the same measured lilt, and Sennett's lack of range makes them hard to distinguish from one another.
Occasional efforts to do something innovative fall flat, including the always dreadful decision to add in a misplaced saxophone solo. At one point in the song "Did Me Good" Sennett changes his delivery to mimic a southern preacher sermonizing. I believe he does so to underscore the ironic effort of the character singing that his lost love will miraculously return to him. While I get where he is going, it is way to overt and just comes off as half-clever.
With all these problems, you might think I am drifting to sell this album, but there are a couple of songs that I genuinely enjoy - notably "Not Going Home" and "The Bank And Trust," the latter being a song about selling out that may or may not be a poke at his work with Rilo Kiley.
So to sum up, "Sun Sun Sun" is not a particularly strong album, but it does have a couple of good songs. Since the lesser tracks aren't really awful so much as they are average, I decided to go with 2 stars, along with a recommendation to stick to the Jenny Lewis side of the Rilo Kiley music tree.
Best tracks: Not Going Home, The Bank And Trust
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