Rilo Kiley - Pictures of Success

So. Rilo Kiley have broken up.

While this has been a long time coming, it really shuts that door to high school that I hadn’t thought about for years now. I listened to More Adventurous in the car on the way to my summer job when I was fifteen. I listened to the last bit of the guitar solo in ‘Science vs. Romance’ while studying for AP exams and trying not to think of all the places I’d moved in the past three years. I remember being confused at hearing ‘Portions for Foxes’ on Laguna Beach, not knowing what that show even was. 

I remember leaving St. Louis for the final time, listening to ‘I Never’ after reading that Jenny Lewis recorded the song in the nude. I thought the world was opening up to me, that emotions could be buried in the tilt of a voice, and that maybe it didn’t matter that I was leaving yet another version of home again for something uncertain, because college was about to start, and what could be better. Well, I don’t know how to answer that one these days. Nothing is really as platitude-heavy as I wanted it to be back then. 

I wish I had seen them live. Rilo Kiley have become a bit of a mid-2000s indie cliche, but I’m coming to realize that those few years were formative of more than I’m willing to admit. Still, there is Jenny Lewis’ voice, which, for fifteen-year-old me, was the equivalent of things I hadn’t known I maybe perhaps just a little wanted to say. A lot.

And so goes junior and senior years. Last time, I forgot to mention that each column is, more or less, a timeline of when I listened to a certain song enough for it to connote something specific to that year. But so it goes.

College, Part Deux

Originally 52 songs, narrowed down to 24, which seems less honest, but easier to digest.

Summer means unwarranted nostalgia. I did a run-through of my iTunes and made two playlists: one for the first half of college, and another for the second. 

Part One. “Questionable”

Originally 43 songs, presented as 24. Maybe I’m finally reaching that age where the things I like don’t solely hold value in retrospect. Everything is a bit more static now. Maturity, here I come.

(p.s. the graphic looks “better” when you click on it) (p.p.s. yes those are my ‘alma mater’ colors. there is no time like the present when it comes to being lame)