A bundle of sadness, sex appeal and stage presence: Even when her material is middling, Jenny Lewis remains a riveting figure
Jenny Lewis
Concorde 2, Brighton
On a scorching summer night, in a sweaty seaside club, you might expect a singer to appear in a T-shirt. Instead, Jenny Lewis wears a skin-tight, sequined ballgown, accessorised with a pair of fluffy wrist-warmers.
She’s dressed to kill and doesn’t mind if the person who perishes is her.
Like her dress, Lewis sparkles. Her voice and half her songs could be from Nashville, but her persona is pure Hollywood. Damaged, dangerous, yet still deploying a dry sense of humour, she could have been dreamt up by Raymond Chandler.
‘This dress feels like a wetsuit,’ she says. ‘Gonna jump in the sea right afterward.’
Like her dress, Jenny Lewis sparkles. Her voice and half her songs could be from Nashville, but her persona is pure Hollywood
She has gathered admirers throughout a long career, comprising six albums with Rilo Kiley and four more solo. The latest, On The Line, bravely opens with a ballad, Heads Gonna Roll, and so does this gig.
It’s a fabulous tune, halfway between Paul McCartney and Dolly Parton.
The only worry is that the show may have peaked early, but Lewis dispels it by dishing up easy-going melodies, hard-hitting lyrics and a rich, soulful sound. Even when her material is middling, she remains a riveting figure – a bundle of sadness, sex appeal and stage presence.
She can throw a shape just by raising a hand (and a wrist-warmer).
At 43 she has a body of work that’s a memoir waiting to happen. On Just One Of The Guys she deals half-jokingly with the ticking of the biological clock; a moment later, on Little White Dove, she’s discussing her late mother, whose heroin habit was once funded by Jenny’s earnings as a child star.
She teams the song, a bleak slow blues, with some giant balloons.
Several tour dates were moved to bigger venues, and the performance and rapturous reception show why. The only thing missing is Lewis’s delicious cover of Handle With Care by the Traveling Wilburys.
But you can find that online afterwards, in lieu of jumping in the sea.
THIS WEEK’S CD RELEASES
By Adam Woods
Jeff Tweedy Warm/Warmer Out now
Rating: 
Rumpled US rock treasures Wilco are back with a new album in October, so to round off a spell that’s produced a memoir and a record of his old songs, group leader Jeff Tweedy rereleases last year’s debut solo album with a second disc attached. Warm stayed true to its name, and Warmer does too, loping and twinkling through ten hushed, bruised-but-happy songs that sometimes suggest the Velvet Underground or the Grateful Dead in their more playful moments
P.P. Arnold The New Adventures Of P.P. Arnold Out Friday
Rating:
P. P. Arnold was Swinging London’s favourite soul voice and a friend to the Sixties Stones, Rod Stewart and Barry Gibb. She still has retro-blokes queueing up to work with her – Ocean Colour Scene’s Steve Cradock produces her first newly recorded solo album since those times. She sounds as she ever did, her voice miraculously preserved, the richly orchestrated pop arrangements pure 1966, except when she finds a disco/house dancefloor on Hold On To Your Dreams