On the Line

On her fourth solo record, Jenny Lewis skewers all of these tensions with astonishing ease. It’s up there with her greatest work to date.

With On the Line, she leans into the deeply personal, and gains a benchmark addition to her catalogue.

The final result on display in On the Line--from the somber waltz of “Do Si Do” to the swell of strings at the climax of “Taffy”--is a new high watermark for a musician who’s never been willing to let a little rain get the best of her.

Jenny Lewis has never sounded this confident in her own skin.

Each track is full of Laurel Canyon vibes – vulnerability, grief, acceptance – and melodies you'll never get out of your head.

There’s loneliness, heartache and regret mixed with more than a pinch of decadence in these songs. The boozy, druggy indulgences match the haziness of the best songs, the self-medication of a generation of Los Angeles kids raised on broken families and bittersweet relationships.

Stacked with radio-friendly earworms aplenty, this is no empty-calories pop. It's filled with inescapable themes--spirituality, life after death, addiction, loss--you can sink your teeth into, commiserate, and then sing along; hopefully through Meryl Streep-type tears.

On The Line, her best solo work to date, finds her trading chaos for peace and pain for parties. And West Coast rock combined with piano glam and Lewis’ lyrics makes for a most celebratory listen, indeed.

On the Line as a whole never feels manufactured, or, really, like anything less than Lewis telling it to you straight.

It’s another fine addition to a canon of work that has, over the last 20 years, been consistently excellent.

Jenny Lewis has reached her troubadour phase. She’s telling tales like never before, singing live in the studio while charismatically leading a band that includes elder statesmen like Benmont Tench and Don Was, not to mention cameos from Ringo Starr, Beck, and Ryan Adams (recorded before the allegations against him emerged).

Her incisive storytelling is at the fore on Heads Gonna Roll, which describes a road movie with “a narcoleptic poet from Duluth”. Ringo Starr plays drums on it, such is Lewis’s back-channel clout. More gripping vignettes follow.

As glorious as the sound of this thing is, glinting with letter-perfect ‘70s-’80s rock sonics and touches of 21st-century psychedelic irony, the songs are the show, written by a woman of a particular age from a perspective well past jaded--she’s been there done that--swung back around to a wide-eyed, faintly zen reportage. Poetic images pop.

Here, Lewis does what she does best: adds the glossy sparkle of Hollywood and a sunny Californian sheen to melancholy and nostalgia, with her most luxuriantly orchestrated album yet.

On the Line is yet another beautifully-realised and impeccably-delivered effort from a songwriter who revels and beguiles us from floorboards and pavements that few other songwriters would dream to tread.

These songs have a sharp, glittery edge, like a neat tequila slammer. [Apr 2019, p.92]

Lewis has never sounded on stronger form than she does here. [May 2019, p.109]

On the Line isn’t a breakup album, a death album, or even a “fuck-you” album, but one that encompasses all of it, ambitious and introspective, focused on embracing the mess and mistakes made along the way.

No amount of musical pedigree can save her commonplace lyrical sentiments, though, which are too noticeable to ignore. Which, to a degree, slightly misstep a personal journey where she takes account of a bevy of life experiences with genuine autonomy.

On The Line may not be her strongest work, no matter how much it aims to be but it proves that Jenny Lewis doesn't need to try too hard to become one of the greats. She's already been one for a while.

Occasionally, the lyrics wander into cliché but for the most part, it’s a strong addition to a stellar body of work and another welcome showing from one of music’s most consistent and underrated performers.

There are dark undertones--drug references mainly--but Lewis is no moper. [Apr 2019, p.32]