High Energy

Music Row
By Brian Rademaekers

Even as the sun set on the trampled grounds of the Coachella Valley Music Festival in late April, indie pop rockers Rilo Kiley took the stage in blistering, near-100-degree heat.
Behind them were towering palms and the rugged peaks of the San Jacinto mountains; before them, a sea of shirtless and bikini-topped fans who had long since shrugged off the desert heat.
The Southern California setting was perfect for a band that is so thoroughly Southern California. Perhaps it was this element that launched them into the incredible, hit-laden set that seemed to electrify a crowd that already had seen a half-dozen acts and endured a day of punishing heat.
Song after song was played with an inhuman exuberance, with Jenny Lewis’ soaring and heart-wrenching voice shaking the crowd even as she lustily mounted her keyboard in triumph.
Meanwhile, Blake Sennett’s tight, crisp guitar riffs kept everything together, rolling through the band’s bright, harmony-rich songs of pop glory as cannons showered the audience in sparkling confetti.
It was the look of a band having a very good time up there.
And while the desert festival — which brought in more than 150,000 people over three days — seemed to inspire a little extra showmanship from Rilo Kiley, the performance was right on par with their local gigs over the years.
That same spirit was there in 2001 when they were rocking out the Theatre of Living Arts on South Street, playing to a meager crowd and touting their debut album, Take Offs and Landings.
That spirit was there when they played to a sold-out house at the Trocadero last September, with a horde of teenyboppers screaming below and a knotted mass of hipsters drinking beer on the balcony, craning their necks to get a look at the sequin-spangled Lewis.
It’s a good bet that same energy will surface yet again when the members of Rilo Kiley play at the Electric Factory on Thursday evening, likely their biggest show here to date.
There are plenty of bands whose recordings don’t do justice to their live act. With Rilo Kiley, that might not be the case, as their albums tend to be stand-alone works that jump with a crazy blast of liveliness that has helped make them one of the hottest bands of the day.
And their singles, well, that’s the stuff pop classics are made of — beautiful songs that ring into your ears and carve a permanent place in your brain, leaving you all the better for it.
The band’s latest album, Under the Blacklight, is full of such songs. Their second release for Warner Bros. and the band’s fourth full-length to date, the 2007 release is Rilo Kiley’s most commercial and unabashedly poppy album thus far.
With the Heart-esque Moneymaker, the playful Smoke Detector and the ultra-catchy Breakin’ Up, Rilo Kiley made a big reach to the mainstream music world.
The 11-track release essentially is a rollicking, addictive jaunt through the streets and clubs of Los Angles. It gives a glimmer into the minds of a rock band fronted by two Southern California natives who learned about the seedy side of life in L.A. as child movie stars (for a great laugh, please see 1989’s The Wizard).
It’s a sun-drenched tour of strippers, break-ups and statutory love affairs.
And while it seems to mark a big departure from those early days when they were little more than an indie rock band on Connor Oberst’s Saddle Creek label, the members of Rilo Kiley have stayed true to their roots. They’ve always been a band that won hearts by writing thoughtful songs with a smooth veneer and a solid, honest-to-goodness rock ’n’ roll structure to back them up.
It’s sing-along stuff with real substance, and it has carried them to the top of the pack. With Under the Backlight, all of that is still there. ••

Check it out . . .
Who: Rilo Kiley
Where: The Electric Factory, 7th and Willow streets.
When Thursday, June 5, at 8 p.m. Tickets are $25.