Artist: Rilo Kiley
Album: Take offs and Landings
I was made aware a few hours ago that Wednesday marks the 200th day of the year, and I’m only on album 165, so I have a slight feeling that I’m not going to finish this project exactly on time, but I’m not so far behind that ill take forever to catch up, either. At any rate, I am going to try to do more albums in a day in order to try to get caught up to at least a respectable place on the timeline. We shall see how that goes.
I don’t know what ever possessed me to pick up this album, but I know that when I first listened to it, I wasn’t impressed. That seems to have happened a lot right around the same time, and I find it amusing that my record collection was more indie rock than I was for a while. I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before, but the time after college was spent trying to figure out who I was (to some degree I’m still working on that) but a large part of that was trying to determine what post-college genesis was supposed to be listening to…what music turned me on at 23, 24, 25 years old?
I had this album, and it was on my ipod throughout those lost years, so I’ve spent some time with it, but this is one that truly fits the theme of this project as it’s not something that I know really well and I need to spend some time with it to get to know it better. I always found it amusing how quickly I latched onto Jenny Lewis’ solo project or Jenny & Johnny, and even to some degree The Elected without ever really being a Rilo Kiley fan. It was never that I disliked this band, per say, but I think that I heard about them too late to be relevant and that when I did listen I still wasn’t sure where I was going, so they just sat on a rack on my desk for years and hung out collecting dust.
As I sit here now and really pay attention to what is going on in these songs, I realize that this album was absolutely meant for 31 year old me, and I can see why 24 year old me wasn’t really so interested. There is a lot of talk of loneliness and distrust, and of broken hearts and brokenness and, while I wasn’t totally unaware of these things, I really hadn’t had a chance in my life to experience them. College was good to me, and even coming right out of school I was surrounded by friends, and was even seeing someone. I had no use for sad songs about going insane and being totally alone.
Now this is not to say that I am totally alone now. I know that I am not, but my social situation is terribly different all these years later. I have friends, but everyone works and is paired off and does their own thing. Many of them have kids. I don’t dislike their kids, but because I don’t have my own, I am just automatically left out of family-outing type situations. That’s really okay, because stuff like that just reminds me of my singledom. Would I like things to be different? Would I like to be in their shoes, doing the happy homemaker thing? You’re damn straight I would, but that’s not what the cards had in store, “And sometimes, lonely hearts, they just get lonelier And lonelier, and lonelier, and lonelier.”
“for the rest of my life, I’m gonna search for someone just like you.”
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