Jenny Lewis is best known as the child actress who became the lead singer in the well-regarded indie-rock band Rilo Kiley. But on Lewis’ solo albums, a lot more sounds at stake: the songs become deeper and more disturbing, her voice more intimate and vulnerable.
Such is the case with “Acid Tongue” (Warner), the follow-up to her excellent 2006 debut, “Rabbit Fur Coat.” The solo book-ends stand as the strongest work of the singer’s career.
Making the solo record felt liberating after a rough year with Rilo Kiley, the band Lewis formed in 1998 with her fellow former child actor Blake Sennett. After a series of well-received independent releases, the quartet’s 2007 major-label debut, “Under the Blacklight,” was a slick pop album about Hollywood artifice and decadence.
“The truth is, I turned myself into a fake pop star for ‘Under the Blacklight,’ ” Lewis says. “People like to think Warner Brothers molded us into this pop band, but that’s what we really wanted to do, and at the time I thought that is what I wanted for that record. I was very capable of singing pop songs and strutting around in hot pants. That’s one aspect of my personality. But do I think that personality best suits the songs I write? No way.”
“Under the Blacklight” was the polar opposite of “Rabbit Fur Coat,” the solo record Lewis had made the year before for the fledgling Team Love label started by her friend, Bright Eyes singer Conor Oberst.
“I never set out to be a solo artist, I never thought I was capable of doing it,” Lewis says. “I can’t believe that I ever got a pass to play music in the first place. I was a child actor --- are you kidding me? I should be like Corey Haim or Corey Feldman or the chick from ‘Diff’rent Strokes.’ Only when Conor suggested I make a record for his label did I start to think about it. We made it quickly, and it felt so easy; doing the vocal harmonies with the Watson Twins, it was like I was singing at home again with my mom and sister. Getting to know each other on the road it became the most enjoyable musical experience I ever had.”
Coming off that creative high, Lewis returned to Rilo Kiley and “everything felt slightly off from the outset.”
“We hadn’t been hanging out with each other until we jumped into making the record, and it was premature,” she says. “We needed to work on our personal relationships before going back to the studio again. We weren’t arguing about the bridge of a song, we’d be arguing about something that happened a decade ago. I was in a total funk, a total creative depression.”
A personal turning point came when she wrote the song “Acid Tongue” and tried to work out an arrangement with Rilo Kiley for “Under the Blacklight.” It never clicked, and she began writing songs on the road and plotting out another solo record.
“Acid Tongue” became the title song of the new record, with a deceptively relaxed, sitting-around-the-porch vibe couching dissolute lyrics: “To be lonely is a habit/Like smoking or taking drugs/And I’ve quit them both/But man, was it rough.”
A few lines later, the song’s narrator fesses up: “You know I’m a liar/Nobody helps a liar.”
It puts a twisted spin on the Los Angeles singer-songwriter tradition. “It’s my thinly veiled way of getting out of writing a strictly ‘confessional’ song,” Lewis says. “I may be a liar, or I may not be one.”
Another track, “The Next Messiah,” is even more audacious. It’s essentially three songs about a person with a god complex stitched into an eight-minute suite, built on a raw blues riff that speeds up and then slows down.
“It’s an ode to Barbra Streisand and the devil,” she says. “The first time I heard a medley was on a Barbra Streisand record. My mother had a fantastic record collection. I started writing songs because of it. ‘The Next Messiah’ was tracked completely live, with all the transitions, and it’s the most exciting thing I’ve ever been involved with in the studio. I wish the rest of the record had been more like that.”
Lewis’ enthusiasm for her solo work suggests that she may be moving past Rilo Kiley. She doesn’t exactly deny that.
“I don’t know if there will be another Rilo Kiley record,” she says. “I never know from record to record. All I know is that I couldn’t have made this record if we didn’t make ‘Under the Blacklight.’ I learned something about myself, and I’m grateful for that.”
greg@gregkot.com
Jenny Lewis: 8 p.m. Friday at Epiphany, 201 S. Ashland, $20; ticketweb.com,
