Rilo Kiley - Under The Blacklight (2007)

First things first, let me make this clear: I am a Rilo Kiley fan. Jenny Lewis possesses one of the most beautiful voices around and is blessed with an increasingly rare knack for blending offbeat pop sensibilities with lyrical substance, wit and depth. I have spent many pleasurable hours listening to the band's previous three efforts and was eagerly anticipating Under The Blacklight.

Any Rilo Kiley fan will acknowledge that the band have always been on a trajectory away from the quirky periphery and towards the bright lights of mainstream success; Jenny Lewis was always too photogenic and vocally talented to remain in the indie wilderness indefinitely. However, it's clear from the outset that they have implemented some unexpectedly major thematic and musical changes for this album. Opening track Silver Lining features stadium-sized gospel backing vocals and what I suspect may be one of those Cher-style vocoders on the chorus hooks. Jenny's voice is still as powerful as ever, but on first listen I found myself not really concentrating on what she was singing as she seemed to be constantly battling for space within the slick, big league production. Previous effort More Adventurous saw Rilo Kiley make the transition from quirky lo-fi to a more mature, polished sound, but on that record it felt like the production was sympathetic and served to enhance the band's innate sensibilities. Here, it feels like an awkward imposition – the fat, electronic beats that underpin several tracks too often out-muscle the otherwise strong melodies and much of the intimacy and warmth that characterised previous Rilo Kiley albums is absent. There are no sparse, sympathetic acoustic arrangements here, and thus no room for Lewis' heartbreaking, fragile side to blossom. Instead she's in power mode throughout, which is a shame; a change of pace might have saved this album from becoming a bit samey, which it does by the end. Breaking Up would work better as a stripped-down acoustic track; as it is, the Bee Gees-esque discotastic beats of the chorus and sundry retro bleeps and bloops serve only to distract you from the song. Give A Little Love could've been touching but for its overweening 80s sheen. In general it feels like the music on this album has become defined by the production, rather than vice versa; to me, always a tell tale sign of overproduction.

Lewis still flirts with controversy in her lyrics, with much of the album themed around seedy sexual encounters, but she seems to have sacrificed depth for pure shock value. The album sets its stall out early on; second and third tracks Close Call and Moneymaker are sexually charged numbers that deal with prostitution and the commodification of the female body respectively, whilst 15 tackles underage sexual relationships and physical abuse. Lewis has always written provocatively, but this time she doesn't seem to have much in the way of a point to make. The thoughtful existentialism and playfulness of previous Rilo Kiley records is gone, replaced with a sheen that quickly dissipates to leave this reviewer feeling cold and unfulfilled. Moneymaker in particular leaves a bad taste in the mouth, whilst Dejalo sounds like a mediocre Shakira song.

I can see what they were trying to do here. On paper you'd think that combining modern, glossy funked-up pop with seedy, sexual lyrics and then selling it to the masses should be deliciously subversive and clever. The irony is that most pop music already does exactly that, with varying degrees of subtlety – Madonna being the most prominent example. Like A Virgin, anyone? Lady Gaga is just one that springs to mind of an ever-growing gaggle of contemporary pedallers of highly sexualised chart pop, and much of the material on Under The Blacklight could at a pinch be sung by her without even much tweaking of the production. The bottom line is that singing about sex to an accompaniment of bombastic, pumped-up pop tunes just isn't remotely shocking any more.

I kept an open mind and gave this album a chance. I certainly don't begrudge success to anyone in the music business and I've always known Rilo Kiley were destined for big things; I just wish they didn't have to sacrifice a good deal of what made them unique and special to get there. One of the small mercies is that they wisely didn't let Blake Sennett take a turn on lead vocals on this album; his voice has always been a weak link and his vocal contributions on previous Rilo Kiley records have seemed pathetic when juxtaposed with Lewis' syrupy, sassy tones.

Jenny Lewis' voice is still heavenly and as far as disposable pop goes, Under The Blacklight is fairly well executed. However, I have (perhaps unfairly) decided to judge it not on what is is, but what it could've been; with different production and a bit more thought, it could have been something special. Lewis' second most recent release was 2006's solo debut with the Watson Twins, Rabbit Fur Coat, which is a warm album full of superb melodies that totally outclasses this album in every department. Instead it just feels a bit empty, as with so much modern pop.

The Gun Club - Fire Of Love (1981)

When I first stumbled across The Gun Club's music about six years ago - whilst randomly browsing music on Myspace, of all places - I couldn't believe that I hadn't heard of them before. I immediately ordered their entire back catalgoue and spent the next few weeks listening on repeat. Fire Of Love, the group's 1981 debut and the subject of this review, is the standout album for me; the fact that it doesn't make regular appearances in those now-ubiquitous 'Best Albums EVER' lists is a travesty.

The Los Angeles four piece were led by Jeffrey Lee Pierce, who tragically died in 1996 after years of battling drug addiction, alcoholism and HIV. I'm not one for hero worshipping self-destructive stars - I detest the cult of celebrity mediocrities such as Pete Doherty - but in Pierce's case, his personal problems are poignantly relevant when discussing his musical output.

The Gun Club are sometimes described as proto psychobillies; in reality their sound has more in common with punk and blues than rockabilly, but ultimately genre tags can't accurately describe their music. Simply put, Fire Of Love has a sound of its own that no band has quite touched upon before or since. I intend that as a big compliment, especially in a world that is now chock full of derivative, overly familiar sounding records. The Gun Club clearly draw inspiration from the blues tradition, but never fall into the trap of being overly reverential to the point of pastiche, unlike The Rolling Stones and countless other white blues revivalists. The swampy, stripped-down roots elements are augmented by a primitive punk fury redolent of early-period Stooges at their best. These dissonant sonic elements somehow fuse to create a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts - something very few bands seem to manage, the only other notable example that springs to mind for me being Pixies.

The essence of Fire Of Love is distilled in the album's fourth track, She's Like Heroin To Me, a sub-three minute tale of drug abuse and damnation. Musically the track is quintessential Gun Club; bourbon-soaked guitar riffs slide drunkenly over stripped-down, tribal drum patterns, whilst Pierce's vocal delivery is equal parts animal menace and demon-possessed howl. The line 'I'm like the train shooting down the mainline' sums up the experience of listening to this album - it's a thrill-a-minute, hectic, substance-fuelled joyride, with one dark, inevitable conclusion. Hearing Pierce almost physically wrestling with his lyrics is a strangely cathartic experience; there is an electricity and rawness to the performance that is so frequently lacking in today's over-produced chart-fillers. His tortured vocals often break and waver off key, the guitar riffs are erratic and always in danger of becoming derailed... and yet somehow it all just adds to the raw, unpolished power and unconventional beauty of this album.

Pierce's lyrics are the black heart beating at the centre of this record. They probe into the ugly underbelly of Bible Belt America and reveal a world tainted by violence and desperation, where love, hate, sex and death become synonymous - an uncomfortable revision of the American Dream that sits in stark contrast to the defiant optimism of albums such as Springsteen's Born to Run, released six years previously. There is no hint of redemption here. Sex Beat, the album's opening track, sets the tone by bombarding the listener with highly sexualised visual imagery ('Deborah Ann's got a tiger in her hips') that puts modern efforts (see Arctic Monkeys et al) at capturing the mindlessly hedonistic and self-destructive yet somehow alluring chaos of a drunken night on the tiles to shame. The album's wild, desolate desertscapes are sparsely populated by characters who in turn seem little more than empty shells - forsaken, damned and in terminal decay, yet somehow clinging to life. The narrator of closing track Goodbye Johnny is 'all broke up... it all just beat me down', whilst the femme fatale wanderer of 'Ghost On A Highway' is 'an animal who bluffs and steals until you become a bigger creature's meal'. On Preaching The Blues, Pierce declares that the blues is 'an aching old heart disease - it's like consumption, baby, killing me by degrees'. The disturbing taboos of racist, sexual and religious intolerance are dealt with bluntly and head-on; exemplified by the narrator in the murder ballad For The Love of Ivy, who was 'hunting for niggers down in the dark, when suddenly I got a better thought: let's go hunt Ivy'. In defence of the album's several uses of the n-word, it must be noted that the songs are works of fiction and in no way imply racism on behalf of the band themselves.

Fire Of Love's artwork is worth a mention as it is equally striking and original - on the front cover, screen printed blocks in lurid purple and yellow reminiscent of Warhol's pop art prints combine with disturbing cut out images of African Americans clutching skulls, pickaxes and daggers. On the rear is an inspired illustration in the same colour scheme featuring two rows of old school pharmaceutical bottles and pillboxes, each cleverly labelled with a small pictogram to accompany a track from the album.

'Timeless' is a word people use to frequently, but in this case it's perfectly appropriate. The Gun Club's finest hour is as relevant and fresh-sounding today as it was two decades ago. It might prove uncomfortable for listeners who don't like a challenge, but isn't that true of most great art? If you have any interest in alternative music and haven't yet sampled the delights of a Gun Club record, buy this now.