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Saturday Music Special: Rilo Kiley

Posted by Cory , Saturday, August 7, 2010 12:00 AM

Rilo Kiley was never really on my radar much; I knew who they were, but they weren't my thing. While in college, I became friends with Stampinator, a girl who lived down the hall from me who turned out to have an eclectic and fascinating taste in music (as well as being perhaps the single most level-headed person I've ever met). When she ended up rooming with Schmoopy during my senior year, we were thrown together even more and before long, we were trading music and introducing each other to new and obscure artists.

We departed from campus for Christmas break, and a few days later I found an e-mail from Stampinator in my inbox with the subject line "Merry Musical Christmas". The e-mail contained four Rilo Kiley tracks, including "The Frug" (delightful to work out to, by the way) and "More Adventurous", which is the song that, nearly three years later, inspired this post. I added the tracks to my iTunes library and gave them a listen, but didn't give Rilo Kiley much thought beyond that. Occasionally, a song would come up on shuffle and I would fleetingly remember that I had wanted to look into buying an album, but nothing ever came of it.

Two months ago, a relationship that was very important to me came to an end, as they do from time to time. The day after I said goodbye to Buckeye for the last time, I got in my car, set my iPhone to shuffle and started the drive home from work. Of the nearly 3,000 songs loaded on my phone, Rilo Kiley's "More Adventurous" was the first one to play, and for the first time, I really listened to Jenny Lewis' gorgeous voice proclaim the words, "I read with every broken heart we should become/more adventurous". I downloaded the entire album the moment I got home. Over the last two months, it's helped me both grieve and heal. Please to enjoy.

Posted in let's go to the video, music, saturday music special