一聽音樂網

Under the Blacklight, Rilo Kiley's 2007 major-label debut, is surely designed as the Los Angeles quartet's entry into the big leagues, the album that makes them cross over to a mass audience — or perhaps it's just meant to make their now de facto leader, Jenny Lewis, cross over, since it plays as a sequel to her 2006 solo stab, Rabbit Fur Coat, as much as it plays as the successor to 2004's More Adventurous, putting the former child right out front, bathing in the spotlight. If More Adventurous gave the group's game plan away in its title, so does Under the Blacklight, for if this album is anything, it's a sleazy crawl through L.A. nightlife, teaming with sex and tattered dreams, all illuminated by a dingy black light. So, it's a conceptual album — which ain't the same thing as a concept album, since there is no story here to tie it together — and to signify the sex Lewis sings about incessantly on this record, Rilo Kiley have decided to ditch most of their indie pretensions and hazy country leanings in favor of layers of ironic new wave disco and spacy flourishes pulled straight out of mid-'80s college rock.