My name is Terry and this is my blog. 
03/22/2006: "Oh Jenny"
music: Like Kissing a Mirrormood: Back
So I buckled in and bought tickets to the Jenny Lewis show at the Orpheum Theater, Sat. April 1st. This will be my second time seeing her live this year, the first time being her show at the Vista Theater (usually a movie theater) with Jonathan Rice opening. Lately, I've been obsessed with the album, listening to it daily and checking MP3 blogs to score some of her live stuff floating around.
If you don't have the new album, I cannot recommend it enough. While it is a departure from her work with Rilo Kiley, it is also one of the most emotionally stirring albums of this year (Cat Power's "The Greatest" also comes to mind.) Jenny's voice is sweet and reads like poetry as opposed to a teen diary entry. The sound is lo-fi (it was recorded in an old analog studio) and the soulful Watson Twins add another beautiful layer of texture.
The Feb. 2nd show at the Vista was one of the better shows I've been to in a while, as Jenny performed well and the acoustics in the theater really suited her and the small band. Here's a pic that was taken by a nice Japanese girl that I befriended at the show. She was sitting next to me by herself and she even taped the show with a cassette recorder. In exchange for the pic, I agreed to digitize and burn the cassette for her. She told me her family owns a sushi restaurant in the OC, so expect a restaurant review in a few weeks. Anyway, here's the pic, a little blurry, yet still beautiful.
As many of my friends know, I usually don't dig on white girls (with the exception of Winona Ryder), but Jenny Lewis is fine with me. I actually remember having a crush on her after seeing her in The Wizard, that Nintendo movie with Kevin Arnold. It's not her schoolgirl looks that has me amazed and in a daze, but the fact that the record speaks so closely to my current state of mind.
As I was listening to "You Are What You Love" I had a slight revelation as the words came at me the first time - "You are what you love, and not what loves you back."
It was then that I decided that I will remain undefined, that it's probably easier to love nothing than trying to love something remote and unresponsive.
Then again, love isn’t always about girls, but ideas and ideals. Intangibles that neither love you back or hate you back for that matter.
Coincidentally, it was an odd echo to Bright Eyes' "Let's Not Shit Ourselves" final hurrah - still one of my favorite lyrics of all time and a line I once lifted and buried in a Valentine's Day love letter years ago:
"How grateful I was then to be part of the mystery, to love and to be loved. Let's just hope that is enough"
Lastly, while we're on the subject, the last concert I saw at the Orpheum Theater was Bright Eyes, Feb. 14th 2005, my last Valentine's Day outing with a pretty girl who I was lucky enough to take home.
Jenny Lewis and The Watson Twins "You Are What You Love" (Live on KCRW)
Bright Eyes "Let's Not Shit Ourselves"