Subscription Required!
Subscribe to Uncut+ to get access to our special members area where you’ll find every issue of Uncut stretching back to Take 1 in 1997 plus a comprehensive collection of our Ultimate Music Guides and other special editions. Browse issues from our archive in full and use our search engine to hunt down features and reviews in Uncut about your favourite artists
If you are already subscribe to Uncut+ or the print edition of Uncut magazine, simply login below.
Login
Don't have an subscription?
From Uncut’s October 2008 issue [Take 137]. High in Lauren Canyon, you’ll find JENNY LEWIS, third generation showbiz kid and snarky queen of LA’s young bohos. Stephen Troussé takes a seat by the pool as Lewis tells all about her journey from child actress to American indie superstar…
In real terms it’s just a short cruise south through the city, from the sprawl of the San Fernando Valley to the winding lanes of Laurel Canyon. But in the American dreamlife of LA, it’s a world away: the kind of journey people spend a lifetime trying to make, plotting their escape, from obscurity and suburban smog to verdant hillside freedom high above Hollywood.
Not coincidentally, it’s the journey that’s been made over 30 years, with the odd Nebraskan detour, by Jenny Lewis. She was recently honoured by the City of Los Angeles for her services in putting Silver Lake, the hipster enclave that spawned her band, Rilo Kiley, 10 years, on the cultural map. And, in truth, thought she was born in Los Angeles, it’s hard to think of a more exemplary modern Angelino outside a Paul Anderson movie. A third generation showbiz kid, she was born on the cabaret circuit, grew up on screen (playing Lucile Ball’s granddaughter, Angelina Jolie’s schoolmate and Fred Savage’s girlfriend), then escaped to become an indie rock starlet and solo alt.country siren. As though it had all been scripted, she’s transformed herself from Valley Girl to Lady Of The Canyon.
Though Lauren Canyon isn’t quite the boho Eden that enchanted a generation in the ‘60s (these days the twilit lanes are lined with power-walking lawyers rather than pie-eyed flower children) it still feels quite magical. It’s lush and rambling, just minutes from the Strip yet home to mountain lions and rattlesnakes. On the day we meet, LA is shaken by the most powerful earthquake in 15 years. Yet nothing seems to disturb the idyllic calm of Lewis’ new home, nestled up in the hills, filled with antique Wurlitzers and vintage tape decks, with a conservatory – christened “The Soularium” – where a tinny Fisher-Price deck plays a stack of classic Motown. Outside Lewis’ pals – members of Deathcab For Cutie and The Postal Service, along with her toyboy troubadour Johnathan Rice – sit by the pool and sip wine Rice earned playing a gig at a local vineyard.
As Lewis proudly shows me round, it occurs to me that if this were an episode of Cribs, sooner or later Lewis would insist that, despite appearances, she’s really still Jenny from the block. “Hmmm,” she thinks for a moment. “Maybe Jenny from the cul-de-sac.”
The setting feels only right to discuss Lewis’ new record, Acid Tongue. The title track was written on the road while she was promoting her solo debut, 2006’s revelatory Rabbit Fur Coat, and she briefly considered recording it with Rilo Kiley for last year’s Under The Blacklist. “But I knew when I wrote it how I wanted it to sound. I wanted it to sound like Crosby, Stills and Nash,” she says, invoking one of the classic original Canyon bands.
“And that’s not really what Rilo Kiley does.”
FIND THE FULL INTERVIEW FROM UNCUT OCTOBER 2008/TAKE 137 IN THE ARCHIVE
