By Berlinda Recacho
Heartbreak feels like it has the tidal force of a black hole: you might already have gone over the event horizon and been reduced to atoms but observers at a safe following distance see you on the brink of oblivion, falling forever. Music takes some of that existential sting away, allowing you to wallow in what you remember as true, though the filmmaker Chris Marker said that a memory is not re-lived, but instead rewritten, like history. 2019's On the Line found Jenny Lewis dealing with the end of a longtime romance, while also reeling from the loss of her mother -- echoing her father's death five years earlier. That record captures her mourning in just about every way possible: achingly bitter, anxiously heartbroken, hysterically strung out, philosophically poetic, and self-deprecatingly giddy, navigating by instruments rather than by sight and reaching her destination a little banged up, but no worse for wear. Now she's four years older and wiser to the fact that that time doesn't heal all wounds. In Joy'All, Lewis revisits loss with a reckless, joyful abandon that swings like a pendulum between recovery and relapse, advice and admission.
The sexual frustration that boiled over in "Red Bull & Hennessy", lead single from On the Line, has been condensed and distilled into the gentler, but still arch "Psychos", channeling the bassline of Fleetwood Mac's classic breakup anthem "Dreams". "Life goes in cycles/it's a merry-go-round", Lewis observes, but this time she has the upper hand, making casual demands of errant lovers. When she slyly insists: "I'm not a psycho/I'm just tryna get laid", her grin is almost audible. Clever ultimatums sail over the heads of their intended targets: "How much would it make you cry? How bad do you really want it? Is it the ego, the id? Hello, goodbye?" "Giddy Up" is the come-on of the idealized self, a cool seductive arrangement of layers and beats, continuing where "Psychos" left off, a nonchalant invitation to "take a chance/on a little romance" with a disclaimer: "we're both adults". The real motivation is revealed to be an aversion to being alone. "Cherry Baby" is the actual self's cheery pop comeback, vulnerable, awkward and striving for connection: "metaphorically/I'm havin' a hard time/writing the next line…cause I fall in love/too easy/too easy/with anyone/who touches me/fucks with me."
The title song employs a tense rhythm and asymmetric pace, running through memories and instructions -- to avoid mistakes, avert disaster and "follow that joy'all" -- that Lewis would have advised herself when she was a teenager: "I was a little kid just like you." A traumatic experience is cited, but not elaborated ("it informed me/it almost destroyed me") but as she reminds us with the hard-won reserve of a survivor, "the burden of proof/is not on you." The chorus of "Puppy and a Truck" is literally "like a shot of good luck", the high ground between personal valleys."My 40s are kicking my ass/and handing it to me in a margarita glass" Lewis admits, acknowledging questionable relationships and the isolation of the pandemic. When she sings "I don't got no kids/I don't got no roots/I'm an orphan/catch me if you can/I'm lacing up my boots" she twists the heart, and references herself in 2014 in "Just One of the Guys" from 2014's Voyager: "I'm just another/lady without a baby", dancing off a moment of reckoning with a sort of jig. Lewis balances between tragedy and comedy with a wry expertise. "Love Feel" is a Seventies-inspired country litany: a version of R.E.M.'s "The End of the World as We Know It" but with a Nashville flair. In "Balcony", the superficial pleasantries of a reunion are possible because the singer has sent her regrets and won't be present for the awkward exchanges and yearning for the past, yet the journey veers into alarming memories of "abusing emotionally/invisible bruises no one can see". As it comes to terms with the past, the phrasing also makes the song: "It's never gonna be/the way it used to be/you can never unsee the search history/it's sort of a test/who can stand themselves the best", then Lewis ends the song with "Bless", her personal benediction.
Joy'All fluctuates between moving forward and holding on, sometimes in the same song, starting with the intention to get back to some sort of order, but relaxing back into entropy. The confident swagger of "Apples and Oranges" devolves into longing when she ends every idealized description of her "new dude/he's real cute" with a mournful comparison: "He just isn't you." "Essence of Life" stands out for its retro-soul production. Jenny Lewis channels Brenda and The Tabulations, Barbara Mason, and Carla Thomas, crooning "I want you back", suffering one moment and in ecstasy, the next. It has emerged as my favorite track because it expands Lewis' already impressive range; Is there anything this talented woman can't do? To close out the album in a loop back to "Psychos", "Chain of Tears" also employs a "Dreams"-esque bass-line, this time in a country-tinged ballad that addresses the question this record tries to answer: "How do you say goodbye forever?/Sincerely seeking advice". There is only one stubborn reply: "Don't paint those red flags white/If it ain't right, it's wrong", which might not seem ultimately helpful or hopeful, but she ends on a positive note, with a sparkly flourish of harp strings.
Maybe we never really get over some people or we think we're over them one day and realize the next day that we're not. Maybe writing songs about them helps exorcise that feeling -- so you start to forget who the songs were addressed to -- maybe it's a universal you. And because your songs are so good and you perform them so well, your listeners forget who the songs were about, if they ever even knew at all. What Jenny Lewis wants back might not even be a specific person, place or thing -- as I listened to the album on repeat,I started to think of it as a sense of who she, or anyone, was before any number of life-changing experiences. Lewis is brave enough to draw from her personal life but also takes to transform the finished work into something that speaks to the audience. She's honest and relatable. She's there for all to see, but manages to remain enigmatic and mysterious, a magic trick unto itself.
When we saw Jenny Lewis perform at the 9:30 Club in June 2014, there were a couple of girls standing in front of us who clearly knew all the words to all the songs. I was there to hear Jenny, not them, but how can you stop people from singing along to music they love? Besides, they stayed in tune. A bitter girl confronted the pair, leaning in to shout sarcastically over the din: "You must be Jenny Lewis fans." But turnabout is fair play. Those girls purposely sang at the top of their lungs, into the ear of the complainer, who left early taking her meanly-observed thoughts along with her. She missed the most beautiful moment of the show, when all of a sudden, at the end of "Melt Your Heart" (from 2006's Rabbit Fur Coat) everyone in the venue spontaneously broke out into the background harmony, and you couldn't tell where the band ended and the audience began.
Joy'All by Jenny Lewis is out now.
[Photo: Bobbi Rich]