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Mar 21, 2019If you like quality songwriting delivered with panache, On The Line is on the money.
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Mar 21, 2019On her fourth solo record, Jenny Lewis skewers all of these tensions with astonishing ease. It’s up there with her greatest work to date.
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Mar 22, 2019With On the Line, she leans into the deeply personal, and gains a benchmark addition to her catalogue.
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Mar 22, 2019The 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.
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Mar 19, 2019Jenny Lewis has never sounded this confident in her own skin.
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Oct 4, 2019Each track is full of Laurel Canyon vibes – vulnerability, grief, acceptance – and melodies you'll never get out of your head.
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Mar 22, 2019There’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.
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Apr 2, 2019Stacked 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.
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Apr 1, 2019On 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.
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Apr 1, 2019On the Line as a whole never feels manufactured, or, really, like anything less than Lewis telling it to you straight.
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Apr 1, 2019It’s another fine addition to a canon of work that has, over the last 20 years, been consistently excellent.
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Mar 25, 2019Jenny 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).
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Mar 25, 2019Her 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.
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Mar 22, 2019As 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.
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Mar 21, 2019Here, 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.
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Mar 18, 2019On 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.
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MojoMar 12, 2019These songs have a sharp, glittery edge, like a neat tequila slammer. [Apr 2019, p.92]
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Q MagazineMar 12, 2019Lewis has never sounded on stronger form than she does here. [May 2019, p.109]
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Mar 22, 2019On 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.
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May 10, 2019No 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.
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Mar 22, 2019On 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.
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Mar 19, 2019Occasionally, 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.
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UncutMar 12, 2019There are dark undertones--drug references mainly--but Lewis is no moper. [Apr 2019, p.32]
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Mar 12, 2019All the sonic elements are in place, so it's slightly disappointing that the songs aren't as vivid as the album's deliberately hazy vibe.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 40 out of 45
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Mixed: 5 out of 45
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Negative: 0 out of 45
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Sep 6, 2019
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Oct 15, 2019