Jenny Lewis at Shepherd's Bush Empire

Jenny Lewis
Slow Moving Clouds
Shepherd's Bush Empire, 25 July 2019

There are few artists I would brave the hottest July day in UK history for but Jenny Lewis is certainly one of them. Her new album, On The Line, is already one of the year's best and despite a venue upgrade (this show was originally supposed to be at the much smaller Electric Ballroom), I knew Lewis' showmanship and sparkle would make this a gig to remember (and the air conditioning at the Empire didn't hurt either).

First though came an Irish band called Slow Moving Clouds, who mix Irish and Nordic folk influences for dreamy Sigor Ros-style atmospheric sounds. They all were suitably beardy and played their set sitting down playing various stringed instruments and sang sad songs, one of which was about a terrible massacre, which they told us to look up but for the life of me I can't remember. I believe I would have truly enjoyed their mellow and hypnotic set but sadly I had two incredibly loud (but tiny) American girls in front of me who would not shut up throughout their set and alas, I heard more about the best places for a Yank to live in London than the beautiful sounds of this unique Dublin trio. Maybe I'll see them again some time in the future where I can appreciate their mellow sounds more. I hope so.

Jenny Lewis herself actually made a fairly low-key entrance despite her sparkly attire, hiding behind her large keyboard for the first two songs, starting with On The Line opener Heads Gonna Roll and the deceptively jaunty Wasted Youth, about her late mother's battle with drugs. A lot of On The Line's songs deal with some pretty heavy themes from her complicated relationship with her mother to her terrible break-up with long-time boyfriend Johnathan Rice (I may be wrong but it does seem that he cheated on her with a younger woman, if not he certainly moved on quickly). But the songs are often dressed in far more upbeat arrangements than the subject matter suggests and her live performance is similarly presented with plenty of joy of sparkle even when the songs themselves are full of heartbreak.

Lewis appears ready for a new better phase of her life and is dressed to the nines to prove it: she's wearing a pink, sparkly, figure-hugging, feather-cuffed dress that seems to pay tribute to her Las Vegas roots and her hair is reaching Bobbie Gentry and Priscilla Presley heights ("You know what they say," she tells us at one point, while pushing up her bouffant, "the higher the hair the closer to... Snoop Dogg," she giggles). 

Sometimes she is behind her keyboards for more emotional moments, other times she struts around the stage like a truly glamorous rock star and other times she steps up onto a little podium and wiggles and poses like the iconic she is undoubtedly becoming. Lewis definitely transcends her indie roots and while she's not big enough to be a pop star, she's definitely sometime of a cult queen. I can imagine in years to come plenty of future singer-songwriters reminiscing about the time seeing Lewis, maybe even at this gig tonight, changing their lives.

The show was mainly a showcase for the new album and it sounded fantastic, particularly the Fleetwood Mac feel of Red Bull & Hennessy and the Beck-produced Do Si Do, complete with the Empire's twirling mirror ball (and during which Lewis compared herself to "a 43-year old mirror ball"). During the cool groove of Little White Dove the audience is showered with a slew of colourful balloons which bounce over our heads throughout the song and eventually end back on stage, with Lewis and her five-piece band looking like they are performing in some kind of cartoonish candy land. It's hard to believe the song is about the death of her mother, yet somehow she brings out the good and the magical even in the darkest of events.

There are older tracks too, mainly from her previous album The Voyager of course, the highlight being her ode to the perils of being a woman growing older in the rock world, yet she manages a knowing giggle with her female guitarist after she sings the devastating line "there's only one difference between you and me, when I look at myself all I can see, I'm just another lady without a baby." There's also a nice moment during the hugely fun and upbeat See Fernando when the music stops and Lewis loses herself in a fit of giggles and the band has to wait until she has composed herself. 

At one point she encourages us all to say hello and introduce ourselves to other people in the crowd, a bit like at church where you have to shake hands with the people sitting around you, and the fellow in front of me turns around and shakes my hand with a smile, which was rather nice, particularly as earlier we all had to deal with another American girl, this time an incredibly drunk one, bouncing into us all and pouring her huge beer everywhere and telling everyone she came all the way from the US just to see Jenny (and obviously get so drunk she wouldn't be able to remember it obviously). Eventually she was booted from the building, but it certainly bonded the rest of us left behind.

I'm sure a lot of people there were waiting and hoping for a Rilo Kiley song and Lewis delivered that too at the end of the main set, with an acoustic version of With Arms Outstretched, where the lights were turned out and Lewis asked us all to light the venue using just our phone lights. It certainly added to the magical atmosphere of the night.

Not surprisingly an encore was rightly demanded and we were given some more songs from On The Line, with the emotional Dogwood in particular proving a highlight. Then she gathered the whole band together around a microphone while she played acoustic guitar and serenaded us with the song Acid Tongue, leaving us all in awed silence. 

I would have really loved seeing Jenny Lewis play the smaller Electric Ballroom as originally intended but really she deserves a bigger audience because every time I see her play she just keeps getting better and better.