Jenny Lewis and Blake Sennett are two of the most successful child actors ever. Consider the following: Neither one is an irredeemable drug-addled lout. And Tina Yothers never made an album as good as More Adventurous, the third from Lewis and Sennett's Los Angeles--based quartet, Rilo Kiley. "I should be in rehab," Lewis jokes. "Or at least wandering the streets, barefoot, looking for Corey Feldman!"
On More Adventurous (recorded, like 2002's The Execution of All Things, with Bright Eyes producer Mike Mogis), the 28-year-old Lewis (Troop Beverly Hills) cements her status as the indie-rock Loretta Lynn, singing gorgeous, countrified pop songs about love, war, and love as war. Meanwhile Sennett (Nickelodeon's Salute Your Shorts), bassist Pierre "Duke" de Reeder, and drummer Jason Boesel act as able stagehands, shifting from radio-ready bombast to intimate folk and electro. For "I Never," Lewis actually stripped naked in the vocal booth in order to sound more exposed.
Sennett had an exposure problem of a different sort: suffering through a Midwestern winter. "Other bands seem to go places like Jamaica to record," he says. "We always go in the freezing winter to a city run by U. of Nebraska kids who yell 'Fag!' out the window. It's like, 'Whatever you say! Just let me make my music!'"
