Jenny Lewis - On the Line

For her pristine, candy-coated fourth album, Jenny Lewis has lovingly crafted a textured bouquet of pop culture history. On the Line is a music nerd’s dream, with instrumental and production contributions from the likes of Beck, Ringo Starr, Ryan Adams, Don Was, Benmont Tench, and Jim Keltner. (Lewis even plays the same piano Carole King used for the Tapestry sessions.) She knows precisely what she wants, and she goes for it here in a big way. Arguably her most pure record to date, On the Line is an austere mood piece, finding Jenny Lewis taking life’s sourest of lemons (the death of her mother, the demise of her 12-year relationship to Jonathan Rice, etc.) and brews a glossy, introspective lemonade that serves as a biting reminder of why her music continues to speak to the masses.

Few musicians do bittersweet better than Jenny Lewis. On the Line flexes its sonic diversity to mimic the jolting back and forth of Lewis’s emotional journey. Whether she zapping up the tempo on songs like the whirling cry of freedom "Red Bull & Hennessy" and the sunny, bubblegum pop tune "Rabbit Hole" or bringing the mood down with moments like the devastating, piano-driven centerpiece Dogwood" or the stream of consciousness ballad "Hollywood Lawn," there’s a silky polish over these tracks that makes it seem as though she’s fronting a prom band in a John Waters movie. Dripping with both style and substance, the album feels as though it’s been put through a rock tumbler, smoothing over the edges of the tracks until they take on a dreamy, sun-drenched quality.

Even when Lewis is singing playing Candy Crush and getting loaded on a weeknight, there’s an innate sense of loss that permeates throughout the album. Emotive sway-a-long "Heads Gonna Roll" and echoing, cinematic "Taffy" sift through the pieces of a failed romance, while funky, bouncy "Little White Dove" feels marred by her mother’s losing battle with liver cancer. It’s in this tonal tightrope walk that Lews displays her adept gift of storytelling, using a clever turn of phrase to capture a world of varied emotions in a single lyric. On the wistful, heartfelt title track, Lewis works through the departure of a former flame, but not without a healthy sense of humor about the situation: “Before you let her under your sweater tonight / Listen to my heart beating / On the line.”

Musically speaking, On the Line has a lot on its mind, between the jazzy, elastic "Wasted Youth" and the swooning, laid back synth number "Do Si Do." Still, Jenny Lewis binds everything together with her crisp melodies and autobiographical generosity. For her, the strength is in the details, and she uses her fourth solo album to spill her guts about everything from coping mechanisms to escapism, filling in all the gaps until she’s left with a fully realized portrait. Jenny Lewis has walked through the flames and come out on the other side with her strongest work in years, possibly even the strongest of her entire career thus far.