The Great Rilo Kiley Disco Freak Out: The Pennypacker Perspective

So by this point, who hasn't had an opinion on Rilo Kiley's new album? It appears most of the feedback is extremely negative but there is a small contingent of critics who like the record, including Joel Levy at Rolling Stone, the man who is the closest thing left to cred that magazine has had for a long time (in an interesting review on the RS video podcast, he noted that he hated the record the first time listening, but loved it by the third time).
The first few songs on the record aren't that bad. The openers "Silver Lining" and "Close Call" should fit OK in the Rilo catalog and have enough of the good stuff that made Jenny Lewis' work with the Watson Twins last year so appealing. The biggest shocker to the world is that - sorry - "The Moneymaker" is a good song. It doesn't quite sound like anything else on the album, it's the one true rocker on the record, and it's undeniably catchy. If it suffers from one ailment, it is the same ailment that plagues the entire record: the lyrics are pretty stupid. After "The Moneymaker", it's pretty much all downhill. Rilo Kiley tries to imitate two very different bands in the middle of the record - "Dreamworld" is an ode to Fleetwood Mac and "Dejalo" summons the Miami Sound Machine. Both fail pretty badly. Again, there are catchy hooks but there are no teeth behind those hooks. Not to mention, - big shock time - Fleetwood Mac were not good. Hell, if you ignore Gloria Estefan's later work, the Miami Sound Machine were actually a pretty damn good band. But that doesn't mean they needed to be imitated here. The album just spirals downward to the very last song, a horrible tween-pop sounding song called "Give A Little Love". Dreadful.
But even though it is pretty much a pop music disaster, does it really matter? The big secret that no one seems willing to talk about is that Rilo's work can be inconsistent. Some of the earlier records have some real dull moments. The one thing that has been the band's consistent strength is the songwriting. The loss of that on this mainstream label release is a bigger problem than the slick production and pop hooks that came in. If that had remained, this really wouldn't or shouldn't have been such an outrage to so many people.
But hey judge for yourself. Here is the video for "The Moneymaker" and here is the video for "Silver Lining". And please try to be objective and not be biased in favor of the band just because you may find Jenny Lewis or any other member of the band attractive.