Jenny And Johnny - I’m Having Fun Now

Earlier this year, loads of music-loving people were getting all hot and bothered over the debut album from Best Coast, said by many to be the best band to come out of California for some time. While they are not from California, there are strong indications that the debut album ‘I’m Having Fun Now’ from Jenny and Johnny is the intellectual as well as pop hook superior to ‘Crazy Summer’ in several important ways.

Jenny and Johnny is the current collaboration between real life girlfriend / boyfriend Jenny Lewis and Johnathan Rice, who were purportedly introduced to each other five years ago by Bright Eyes’s Conor Oberst. Before you start running for the hills after reading the last sentence (naturally assuming this is going to be a collection of cloyingly sweet love songs), have a listen to ‘I’m Having Fun Now’ and you will find it truly deserves your full attention.

The overall sound is not a big departure for Lewis from her recent solo work, indie rock with a country twang. Interestingly, the introspective style Lewis utilized in ‘Acid Tongue’ is turned on its head in this collaboration with Rice, taking more risks lyrically while maintaining poppiness gracefully. The best lessons you learned in school were always those that were disguised as something much lighter. This is exactly the direction Lewis and Rice went in for this effort, probably the most religious popular music album since the Hold Steady’s 2005 decidedly Catholic ‘Separation Sunday’. There are references aplenty to snakes that bite, Jerusalem, Abraham, knives, sinning and corrupted souls.

Yet if the first song you heard from this album is ‘Big Wave’, the single most like the music of Bethany Cosentino’s band, you could almost trick yourself that ‘I’m Having Fun Now’, as its name suggest, is one big, breezy album as refreshingly bracing as the cold Pacific air without much other substance. But therein lies the brilliance of this album. It’s simple on the surface and can be enjoyed simply by the beauty of Lewis and Rice’s voices, which have been perfectly reined in to allow either voice to shine when warranted and then combine in beautiful harmony (see ‘Straight Edge of the Blade’, ‘Switchblade’, and ‘New Yorker Cartoon’).

But if you want to dig deeper, like an onion, there are other layers of meaning to explore. The lyric sung by Lewis, ‘I don’t believe that paradise is lost / I say this with my fingers crossed / and if you don’t believe in prophecy / decide when it’s finished’ from ‘My Pet Snakes’ suggests despite the sunniness of their overall sound, the duo has given the content of this album considerable thought. This is no lightweight.

Being romantically involved, Lewis and Rice could have gone down the wrong route completely. There are hints to this: for example, the opening track, ‘Scissor Runner’, is an ode to the bad girl (or boy) you know is completely wrong for you but admit has taken all of your attention. They also show their humorous side with closing track ‘Committed’, featuring a riff that bears an eerie resemblance to Billy Ray Cyrus’s ‘Achy Breaky Heart’. But their tune has funnier lyrics (Michael Jackson’s monkey, anyone?) than that groan-worthy country crossover hit. Do yourself a favour and get this album.