Courtesy of Rilo Kiley
Audio By Carbonatix
Bands reunite for a multitude of reasons: financial, emotional, cultural, occasionally even artistic.
What stands out about the reunion of Rilo Kiley, a beloved, influential indie rock quartet from Los Angeles that drifted apart over a decade ago, is how it seemed to happen gradually and suddenly, not unlike its initial dissolution.
The four members of Rilo Kiley — Jenny Lewis, Blake Sennett, Pierre de Reeder and Jason Boesel — last released an album in 2007 (Under the Blacklight). In the years immediately afterward, once the Blacklight promotional cycle wound down, it was hinted that the band was, if not explicitly breaking up, certainly drifting toward a hiatus.
To wit: Lewis ventured out on her own just ahead of Blacklight’s release with 2006’s Rabbit Fur Coat, and followed Blacklight a year later with 2008’s Acid Tongue. Sennett, for his part, started up a side project called The Elected, which also released its sophomore album, Sun, Sun, Sun, in 2006.
Contemporary interviews with Sennett, in particular, suggest, shall we say, a studied indifference.
“I would say that if Rilo Kiley were … hmmm … a human being … hmmm … he’s probably laying on his back in a morgue with a tag on his toe,” Sennett told Consequence in April 2011, ahead of The Elected’s third album. “Now, I see movies where the dead get up and walk. And when they do that, rarely do good things happen.”
Lewis confirmed Rilo Kiley was no more in 2014 (a year in which she released her third solo album, The Voyager).
Sentiment like Sennett’s 2011 comments is why news of Rilo Kiley’s reconstitution earlier this year was met with mildly incredulous shock and elation. It wasn’t that the band had suffered some fatally impossible split, but rather, it simply dissipated as its individual members’ focus turned elsewhere.
To commemorate the band’s return, Rilo Kiley released the rather slyly titled compilation How We Choose to Remember It, a fitting acknowledgement of everyone’s perspective on nostalgia.
Sennett’s present assessment of Rilo Kiley is, to put it mildly, radically different.
“There was no one who was desperate or needed this reunion,” he said from a recent Chicago tour stop. “We came to it slowly, and I think, authentically, and I think it’s more meaningful for that. … We wanted it to transcend business, and just be a meaningful thing for us individually and for the fans or the people who were moved by the music. It was a very gradual thing.”
Rilo Kiley will bring its reunion to Dallas and Deep Ellum on Oct. 9, for the band’s first concert here in 17 years. The foursome will take the stage less than two miles from the venue it last headlined here in June 2008, the then-Palladium Ballroom.
Sennett, now 51 years old, is a key architect of Rilo Kiley’s signature, influential sound, having written or co-written with Lewis every track on all four of the band’s studio albums.
The alchemy conjured by Sennett and Lewis — a blend of vulnerability, beauty and cynicism, shot through with candy-coated melodies and stylistic verve on songs like “Silver Lining,” “The Execution of All Things” or “Portions for Foxes” — has proved both durable and empowering for legions of young artists in their wake, such as Haim, Japanese Breakfast or Harry Styles.
Indeed, Rilo Kiley is touring solely on the strength of that back catalog, as the most recent tune currently at its disposal is 18 years old. Sennett described seeing venues full of fans singing along — some of whom weren’t even alive during Rilo Kiley’s initial existence — as “super gratifying.” “It’s humbling,” he said. “You see people have listened to that stuff and it has stood the test of at least the last 20 years or so. That’s not by design; it’s by virtue of us trying to write music that we believed [in]. We weren’t thinking, ‘Let’s make sure we can tour on the strength of our back catalog in 25 years.’ We were just like, ‘Let’s write shit that’s real and [that] we love.’”
That intuitive understanding of bucking the algorithm and reveling in humans making music for other humans has yielded the band the rare opportunity to grasp a sense of their legacy in real time. Call it a chance to be appreciated while it still means something and to witness a retreat, of sorts, from the preferred modern method of concert attendance.
“At the outset, you think, ‘Oh, that’ll be neat. It’ll be cool to play for people,’” Sennett said. “But you don’t think that this person is going to hold up a sign that says, ‘I named my child Rilo,’ or whatever it is — you don’t think that. You just think it’s binary: Should we do Rilo Kiley ever again? In the moment it was asked of me by Duke [Pierre de Reeder’s nickname] and Jenny, I was like, ‘Yeah, let’s do it. Let’s try that.’
“And then you get out there and go, ‘Oh my gosh, this is meaningful.’ There was a time, pre-social media, where we existed that was [a] generally more simple time — it just was. Social media has done a lot for people, but it’s also caused a lot of chaos and FOMO, you know? To look and see everybody without their phones standing there, it’s something I am savoring, and I cherish that it’s still sort of how more or less our original fans are choosing to perceive the show — to not record it, for the most part, and to just savor it.”
As with any band’s reunion, thoughts will inevitably turn to what lies beyond.
Rilo Kiley has scheduled tour dates through the end of October, including a stop at the Austin City Limits Music Festival for weekend two, and a lone 2026 slot for next June’s Primavera Sound in Barcelona.
The more sanguine fans might be fervently wishing Lewis and Sennett were sitting on a pile of as-yet-unrecorded material.
“I would say we’re pretty in the moment,” Sennett said, ever-so-slightly deflating that particular bubble of hope. “I wouldn’t say we’d reached the point that we’d want to talk about anything more than the moment. I think that has been part of the alchemy, which is just let’s not plan any more than we have to and reach any farther. We’re just kind of letting it be what it is.”
While that might sound like dancing around the answer, Sennett says it with as much earnestness and thoughtfulness as he’s displayed throughout the conversation.
To hear him describe the depth of feeling elicited by embarking on this reunion, there is a sense, for however much the fans are moved by seeing the four members of Rilo Kiley together again, it’s just as powerful — if not more so — on stage.
“I’d like to believe the really significant relationships in your life are ones you’re meant to have,” Sennett said. “I’m 100% sure that the three other people in Rilo Kiley are three of those [for me]. I’m grateful we had this time to be apart and then come back together and sort of trade notes on what we’ve learned in the intervening years. I love those dudes.”
“This is a part of my family — for better or for worse. You know, you get older, and you go … life is long, and if you do it right, it’s a varied experience. Those dudes definitely made my life better, and Rilo Kiley definitely made my life better.”
Rilo Kiley will perform on Thursday, Oct. 9, at 8 p.m. at The Bomb Factory, 2713 Canton St. Tickets are available starting at $77.59 on axs.com.
