We are just one week away from getting to hear the first Jenny Lewis album in five years. Next week, Lewis, the former Rilo Kiley leader, will release On The Line, her long-awaited follow-up to 2014’s The Voyager. She’s been honing these new songs, and playing them live, for literal years now. And now we get to hear the results of all that work. Lewis has already shared two early singles from the album “Red Bull & Hennessy” and “Heads Gonna Roll.” And now she’s dropped a third song, the sparkling “Wasted Youth.”
Like the previous two singles, “Wasted Youth” is a fine example of old-school California singer-songwriter pop songcraft. The song nods back to the Lauren Canyon music of the ’70s, and it features the work of a few all-star musicians. Benmont Tench, former keyboardist for Tom Petty’s heartbreakers, plays Vox Continental and Mellotron organs on the song, and Don Was, ’80s vintage funk-rock dinosaur-walker and big-name producer, plays bass.
And like a lot of Jenny Lewis songs, “Wasted Youth” takes a playful look at California rich-boho culture, at the wages of hedonism, and at the effects of being raised by selfish people: “Why are you lying? / The bourbon’s gone / Mercury hasn’t been in retrograde for that long.” Check it out below.
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On The Line is out 3/22 on Warner Bros.
This article originally appeared in Stereogum.
