ACL Preview: Jenny Lewis

How could we resist doing a feature on the amazing Jenny Lewis? I’m sure many of you out there in the internet world are familiar with Ms. Lewis, but we rarely pass on a chance to bring up our obsession with the famed singer.  Follow the jump to read more.

If given the chance, we here at ATH would of course ask Jenny Lewis about her starring role in the 1989 film The Wizard. Not only will we ask, it’ll be the first question.  “Jenny, first question: Was it difficult working with such a big name like Fred Savage?  Was he ever… inappropriate?” If you weren’t aware, Jenny was a child actress before moving on to bigger and better things in the music biz. Enough about that.

While her acting career began dwindling, Jenny started up a little band called Rilo Kiley in the late 90’s. Rilo Kiley saw success after a few years of touring and slowly became one of the pioneers of the indie rock seen. At this point in her career, some say Jenny becamae the “queen of indie rock”. Rilo Kiley has been putting out great releases over the years including their most recent effort, Under the Blacklight, of 2007.

Outside of her lead role in Rilo Kiley, Jenny has worked with a whole slew of musicians on collaborative projects. The most well known would be her voice work on Ben Gibbard & Jimmy Tamborello’s side project Postal Service. All parties involved in this project fell on commercial success never before seen in their previous efforts. I’m pretty sure every sorority girl owns a copy of Give Up….. I hear there’s a big market for that. Our indie rock queen has also provided her services to such artists as Cursive, Conor Oberst, Elvis Costello, and a ton of others.

The Jenny Lewis of today sees her embarking on unchartered territory. She’s gone country. In 2006, Jenny put her own take on country/alt-country (or whatever you want to call it) with the album Rabbit Fur Coat. Critics and fans alike seemed to eat up the new direction she was headed in. Her follow up to this release, Acid Tongue, came out today and we’ll be gettin’ a review of it soon. Will the new direction continue? I’ll let you be the judge.

You can catch Jenny Lewis during ACL at 5:45pm Sunday on the WaMu stage.

Check out most recent single “Acid Tongue”.

[audio:https://austintownhall.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/05-acid-tongue.mp3]

Download: Jenny Lewis – Acid Tongue [MP3]