You know her. She’s Jenny Lewis, the former Rilo Kiley singer, recovered child actress and quirky indie queenie with the cowgirl voice. He’s Johnathan Rice, the baby-faced Virginia-born singer-songwriter who played Orby in Walk The Line.
I’m Having Fun Now combines Big Star haziness and ‘60s garage graft by way of ‘80s Paisley undergrounders and ‘90s indie cinema soundtracks. Sunny harmonies, counter-melodies a go-go, barely a tune over three minutes. There are smart, tart floor-fillers like ‘Scissor Runner’ and ‘Big Wave’’. There are mid-tempo melancholic neo-countryfied tunes like ‘Switchblade’ (“You used to dine out on a dollar/ With a switchblade in your coat”) that pay tribute to classic Ed Hopper Americana through a post-REM/Replacements lens. There are quasi psychedelic Lee ‘n’ Nancy sways like ‘While Men Are Dreaming’.
Lewis has a nice set of pipes that pay tribute to period girly-pop trills and rodeo sweetheart twangs, Rice does that downward-looking nobody-understands-me-and-never-will thang to a T, and the words – particularly ‘Animal Just Like Zeus’ – testify to a Costello-like eye for the uncommon couplet.
Much like She & Him, Jenny & Johnny make well-crafted, backwards-glancing records that’ll brighten your morning but won’t change your life. But then, if you don’t want your life changed, maybe that’s no bad thing.
Key track: ‘Switchblade’