The 15 best Rilo Kiley songs, ranked

We’ve been doomed for a while now. Jenny Lewis has always been aware of that. Look back to The Execution Of All Things (if not before)—a title that didn’t mince words on the matter: “We’re all so upset about the disappearing ground / as we watch it melt,” the Rilo Kiley vocalist sighed during its opening bars. 

At the time of my writing, the U.K. is broiling under an unseasonably gross heatwave. The past two days broke records for the hottest temperature ever recorded in May. What’s so unnerving is that the records were broken by two degrees, not the usual fraction of a degree, maxing out around 35 °C (95 °F) each day. If that doesn’t sound like something to write home about, a reminder that this country is useless at dealing with anything other than overcast jacket weather. From old folks’ homes to schools, libraries, and private residences, almost nowhere has air conditioning, with many buildings designed to trap and retain heat. Our Victorian-era train tracks are only stress tested up to 27 °C. The tarmac on our roads is melting. And over the public holiday weekend, nine people died due to the heatwave. 

And so The Execution Of All Things’ climate anxiety is inadvertently the perfect companion to long days stuck to your chair in an airless flat as the clammy streets of West London are chorused with screaming motorbikes, police sirens, and protests from bored barking dogs. As The Execution Of All Things goes on, though, it reaches a more hopeful, compromising relationship with the world. “With Arms Outstretched” overflows with gratitude for lake days that you wile away too quickly. The euphoric finale, “Spectacular Views,” has nothing bad to say about the coast—“it’s so fucking beautiful,” in fact.  

In other words, Rilo Kiley did it all. They made you think, then in the next breath removed your need or obligation to. They wrapped up apocalyptic angst with lovesickness. They took us to LA satellite towns—Glendora, Duarte—as often as wild oceans and plains. They dipped into chicken-wire country, doo wop, and marching band music. There’s a buzzy motorik Stereolab homage near the end of Take Offs And Landings, their first full-length album, for which they signed to Seattle label Barsuk. They were emo enough to need clarification via the Is This Band Emo? website, even though the answer was/is/will always be, no—Rilo Kiley is indie. They were always in their own lane, from child actors embarking on a scrappy second career to major label darlings to cult favorites whose album covers get tattooed by the likes of Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield. They never lost what made them Rilo Kiley—the biting wit, the disguised wisdom, the epic pop amalgamations. 

There aren’t exactly deep cuts when it comes to Rilo Kiley. Everyone who’s spent time with the band’s songs has really spent time with them—they’ve gone in deep, and the band has undoubtedly been there for its listeners during at least one highly formative era. “As for those things that act as markers in your life, but in between you can’t remember,” goes one line from “Science vs Romance,” a song I already feel guilty for omitting from this list. But that’s Rilo Kiley, marking your life in free and exciting times as in stifling, anxious heatwaves. As in rainy day reflections. 

But there is a consensus on five or six songs that are always considered Rilo Kiley’s best. This allows a top ten list a few variables and a top fifteen list some much-needed wiggle room. Last year, the band sort of did their own top ten—or top eleven—with a winkingly titled greatest hits album, That’s How We Choose to Remember It, which leaned heavily on Under the Blacklight, the band’s final studio output. More than ten years ago, Stereogum published a list of ten. Six years ago, r/indieheads crowd-sourced their ten favorites. Neither list included songs from that 2007 record. Hannah Judge of the Ottawa-based indie-pop band fanclubwallet has a top five that isn’t a bad starting point, either. (Her breakout hit “Car Crash in G Major” was an homage to “Plane Crash in C.”) And if you’ve got some time, someone on the internet has made a Rilo Kiley song sorter. “Pick which song you like better in each battle to get an accurate list of your favorite songs by Rilo Kiley,” the instructions read. There are almost 300 “battles,” so clear your calendar. 

As for Paste, the website ranked their six albums back in 2020 but has not weighed in on the best songs debate until now. With the band set for a busy summer of reunion shows, and the rest of us hurtling towards execution/extinction, it’s a good time to. And let’s be honest: there probably won’t be major revelations here beyond spotlighting overlooked gems and effusing over some of the best songs ever written, period. But take this as a cue to reimmerse yourself in this thrilling back catalog and appreciate the world in all of its damaged beauty. (Also, elephant in the room: I didn’t choose any songs sung by Blake Sennett. “She’s meteoric and I’m mediocre,” he posed in a 2007 SPIN cover story, so he gets it more than anyone.)

*****

15. “Let Me Back In” (rkives, 2013)

The Rilo Kiley story is also an LA story, so this won’t be the only love letter to the Golden State on this list. But it’s an important—and overlooked—one. Recorded during the sessions for Under the Blacklight, and opening the 2013 rarities album rkives, “Let Me Back In” has that bittersweet, sighing feeling of going home after a long time away—from Omaha to the Black Hills and even Budapest, as the lyrics reel off. When the going-home song is done right, it sounds timeless, and this one resembles a standard that’s been around for the best part of a century, like something Ella Fitzgerald or Julie London could’ve sung. There’s a romantic, gushing string section, sparkling acoustic arpeggios, and chord substitutions that Randy Newman would’ve signed off on. “When the palm trees bow their heads / No matter how cruel I’ve been / LA, you always let me back in,” Lewis intones, evoking the kind of relationship that lasts a lifetime.

14. “Don’t Deconstruct” (Take Offs And Landings, 2001)

Sometimes all you need is Lewis’ voice, a glassy electric piano, and the rom-pa-pom-pom trumpet of a Sgt. Pepper’s tune. That’s the case on this hidden-gem capsule from the back half of Rilo Kiley’s first full-length record, which acts as a bridge between Sennett’s ponderous “Small Figures in a Vast Expanse” and the krautrock propulsion of “Always.” It’s a pause and a palate cleanser that can stand on its own two feet as two of the most enjoyable minutes in the band’s archive.

13. “Close Call” (Under the Blacklight, 2007)

If you joined Rilo Kiley with Dawson’s Creek or Saddle Creek, this album might have been jarring. It’s a major label album and sounds like it (more so than More Adventurous, itself released on a Warner imprint). It was snubbed by r/indieheads when they did their top ten and is perhaps overly represented on the band’s recent greatest hits record. So I’m aiming to split the difference, avoid the big singles (“The Moneymaker” and “Silver Lining,” catchy as they are), and remind you of “Close Call,” a less-loved track that commits to four sultry, swaggery minor chords for its duration. This isn’t just a token Under the Blacklight pick to tick a box. “Close Call” is the band’s after-dark, black-lit worldbuilding at its most alluring.

12. “Emotional” (rkives, 2013)

This Execution of All Things B-side is one of Rilo Kiley’s simpler songs. The refrain is basically “you’re so emotional” over and over. The recipient is emotional in the light of their mom’s front room, the light of the moon, even the light of Marquee Moon (the Television album). But that’s a big enough sentiment—and such an absurdly catchy hook—to build a song around. They get a lot of mileage out of it, especially as Lewis delivers it in this exhausted but unwavering way, like she’s beyond frustrated with whomever she’s addressing but at the same time knows that being so emo is so justified. As for the backing band, they likewise wring a lot out of the song’s two vamping chords, attacked over a jagged, half-time groove that only switches up as the outro takes off towards the moon with Sennett’s slaloming octave chords.

11. “Love and War (11/11/46)” (More Adventurous, 2004)

Rilo Kiley could even do anti-war anthems, would you believe? As well as being seriously propulsive and musically exhilarating with its zigzaggy guitars that sound like you’d get a shock from touching them, “Love and War” is akin to a John Cheever short story in song form. It has some of Lewis’ most affecting and painful lyrics. The narrator’s grandpa has a drunken fall. The cops arrive. Grandpa tells them, “‘I fought in World War II!’ / And then they carried him to a darkened hospital room / And said, ‘No modern person here remembers you.’” She has to wait for the military cemetery to say goodbye. In the finale, her mom delivers some harsh truths, but it’s the line before it that hits the hardest, and it’s all about the delivery. The arrangement breaks down. There’s a defibrillator synth, the requisite handclaps Rilo Kiley loves so much. The tension prickles, and then Lewis cries: “When we got there, this is what she said to MEEEE!” Her voice sounds gargantuan on that final word, growling with emotion. The story leaves you shellshocked; the music could carry you through anything.

10. “Wires And Waves” (Take Offs And Landings, 2001)

Like Death Cab and Wilco before them, Rilo Kiley did the inadvertent 9/11 commentary thing on Take Offs And Landings, released July 2001. There’s the song “Plane Crash In C.” There are lyrics like “sometimes planes, they smash up in the sky” from “Wires And Waves,” a coltish, cheerful single that hovers above an undercurrent of doom as Lewis parses a long-distance relationship that just gets lonelier and lonelier and lonelier. “How did you survive all those fires and floods? / how did you survive your insufferable friends?”, she sings to her farflung love, speaking to the Rilo Kiley throughline of impending climate apocalypse vs interpersonal hardships. It’s a fun song, though, with half-twinkly, half-zippy guitar interplay that isn’t far from midwest emo and a quick, concise chorus that’s more of a two-chord turnaround to resolve the verse and help lovesick folk get their bearings.

9. “Glendora” (Rilo Kiley, 1999)

It says a lot that Jenny Lewis can make a Buffalo Bill line sound like one of hers (“would you fuck me? / ‘cause I’d fuck me”). The acuity of her lyrics hits you in the face on this one, from the band’s debut, The Initial Friend EP (later released as Rilo Kiley). This is back when Lewis was throwing everything at the wall and had less finesse—more an impish tenacity. And because there’s so much to keep up with—so many biting, subversive lyrics like “every time I come over to your house / you just shit on my face”—the chorus acts as a reset, as it does on “Wires And Waves.” “I cry cry cry” goes the massive singalong, iced with sunny girl-group harmonies. Everyone loves the dorky dancing of “The Frug,” but “Glendora” has lasting power and demonstrates Rilo Kiley’s DNA more than anything else from this bitty first release.

8. “Does He Love You?” (More Adventurous, 2004)

This quiet highlight of the More Adventurous album is a gutwrenching, bastardized ballad where Rilo Kiley show off their adroitness for putting together jazz-standard chord progressions that can’t / won’t age. Lewis lays out a love triangle with a lot of reading between the lines and poses a central question—are you flawed if you aren’t free?—that is such a biggie it could make you upend everything in pursuit of the answer. It’s an epic, big-band-via-Liz-Phair kind of song that traverses many modes before ending with a bickering three-part string arrangement, like three entangled voices crying into the night.

7. “The Good That Won’t Come Out” (The Execution Of All Things, 2002)

“The Good That Won’t Come Out” is not a friendly way to start an album, and that’s what makes it so endlessly compelling. It’s eerie, a little creepy, tick-tocking along with an ersatz drum loop that isn’t far off elevator music from a haunted hotel. Lewis makes you lean in like she’s telling you a secret, her voice veiled by some cockpit-mic effect. This is also the ultimate conflation of the top-down climate threat with bottom-up self-destruction. “I do this thing where I think I’m real sick but I won’t go to the doctor to find out about it,” she sings, instead standing on a frozen lake and watching it melt as the song slowly builds to its final-minute explosion. Sennett’s sticky-clean guitar collides with vibraphone bongs from Mike Mogis (the co-founder of their new label home, Saddle Creek)—and you know you’re in for a hell of a ride over the next eleven tracks.

6. “Pictures of Success” (Take Offs And Landings, 2001)

Here we are—the Rilo Kiley song that got tumblr-ed within an inch of its life and converted more fans than perhaps any other track. And yet, musically, “Pictures of Success” is something of a black sheep within the wider catalog. It’s the band’s longest song, an almost-seven-minute patter of sad, cursive guitar lines like fountain pens flicking across a diary page. But that’s the perfect bed for some of the most beloved, oft-quoted Lewis lyrics about the everyday exhaustion of being young and a woman: “I’m a modern girl, but I fold in half so easily” and—the soaring finale—“I’ve got my best shoes on / I’m ready to go.” During Rilo Kiley’s Bandsplain episode, Yasi Salek and Quinn Moreland pick up on the track’s take-your-time structure, and its breathing room, and how that tracks with LA living. This isn’t a New York bustle, not a Midwestern community. It’s the sound of West Coast patience, space, and big-blue-sky dreaming.

5. “With Arms Outstretched” (The Execution Of All Things, 2002)

There’s that adage about really good songs still being really good under all the accoutrements—you can play them naked and analog, just a group of friends and an acoustic guitar and an immunity to societal collapse. That’s the case here. This is Rilo Kiley’s poignant campfire singalong (they sure do love a handclap offbeat). But it’s less Girl Scouts of America, and more living off the grid after nuclear fallout. We’re also at the point in the list where every chorus is one you’d get tattooed. “Some days, they last longer than others / But this day by the lake went too fast / And if you want me, you better speak up, I won’t wait / So you better move fast”—at first it’s a solo Lewis lilt, but it becomes a chanted gang vocal by the final run-through. This is a song that makes you want to get out in nature and kiss the ground as you weep at the beauty of it all. And the way things are going, you better move fast.

4. “Portions for Foxes” (More Adventurous, 2004)

In terms of rocking, rolling, rollicking energy, “Portions for Foxes” is somewhat analogous to “Spectacular Views” from Execution—a big, bad wolf (or fox) of a rock banger that, in this case, appraises the downsides of emotionless sex. The lyrics are gnarly and spat at you. The guitars are restless and fervent. The third verse of this thing gets me every time: everything drops out and Lewis sings, “There’s a pretty young thing in front of you / And she’s real pretty and she’s real into you”—and then the drums snap back in, guitar harmonics chime like church bells, someone pants like a dog, and the whole thing ascends for the fuck-it payoff: “I don’t care / I like you.” It’s the OG “bad idea right? / fuck it, it’s fine.”

3. “A Better Son/Daughter” (The Execution Of All Things, 2002)

I can’t unhear the Bandsplain crew calling this “The Black Parade for girls.” The longer you think about it, the less sense it makes. But you know exactly the vibe from that description. A different take came from venerated music critic Robert Christgau, who wrote, “‘A Better Son/Daughter’ should be licensed to the American Psychological Association for free downloading by depressives and their co-dependents.” In other words, does a better mirror-pep-talk song exist? For the petrified but awake, the weak but not giving in, this stirring, hand-on-heart collision of Aaron Copland, Hop Along, and Sufjan Stevens in maximalist mode is the GOAT.

2. “Spectacular Views” (The Execution Of All Things, 2002)

If I could only listen to one Rilo Kiley song for the rest of my life, it would be this fizzing, forward-rolling barnburner from the end of The Execution Of All Things. As someone who grew up in a seaside town they’ve since left, “there are no bad words for the coast today” is a mantra you carry with you—that fills you with joy and a sense of belonging when you’re back, that makes you feel achy and incomplete when you’re away. (Get you a euphoric, scream-along chorus that can do both.) But my own attachment aside, few Rilo Kiley songs go as hard as this: did Jason Boesel ever hit the drums this way? The guitar lines clamber over each other like a litter of excited puppies. And when it’s over, it’s not over—the second half of the song concludes with the cut-up sequence about Lewis’ parents’ divorce known as “And That’s How I Choose to Remember It,” which threads through the album. It’s a woozy, whispered, carnival-music coda that sounds like a resolution.

1. “More Adventurous” (More Adventurous, 2004)

The Execution Of All Things dominated our top five, but these days there’s only one song that makes sense in the top spot: the gorgeous title track from the band’s third album. Between melting pedal steel and rusty harmonica blasts, Lewis invokes Frank O’Hara poetry (“Meditations in an Emergency” is such a Rilo Kiley title): “I read with every broken heart / We should become more adventurous,” she sings before celebrating the unstoppable force that is love without caveat. Another line from that same O’Hara poem goes, “It is easy to be beautiful; it is difficult to appear so.” That’s Rilo Kiley to a tee—making it look easy, but actually fucked-up and virtuosic underneath. “More Adventurous” has that same too-easy-to-be-true thing that you can’t put your finger on. For me, I can lean all my weight on it. It can do sunset reflections as much as chipper mornings, where you can’t wait to see what the world has planned for you. It’s jolly but melancholy. You can read it as a love song or a breakup one. It perfectly ballets down the aisle between the two. But ultimately it’s neither. “Get loved, make more, try to stay alive” goes a later verse—it’s about survival, the primitive urge to fight and go on that Lewis has always wrapped up with everything else in life that’s superficial but not. It’s comforting that underneath it all we’re just portions for foxes, leaves on a tree. And in that there is liberation—to be adventurous. More adventurous than ever.

Hayden Merrick is a London-based music journalist and Features Editor at The Line of Best Fit. He also writes for Bandcamp Daily, FLOOD, and others.

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