In my last encounter with Blake Sennett, the Rilo Kiley co-leader was preaching the merits of personal property. The California pop quartet had just left the stage after a cover of the Postal Service’s “Such Great Heights.” (Sennett sang Ben Gibbard’s lines; Rilo Kiley frontwoman Jenny Lewis sang her part from the original.) Sennett returned to find his lyric sheet missing. Anger resonated from his voice as he accused various members of the departing crowd. It was as if someone had stripped Sennett of his right to sing, as if it could be crumpled and tossed away. No wonder the Elected’s 2004 debut is titled Me First; the side-project affords Sennett the opportunity to part the curtains and allow a bit of sunshine to overtake Lewis’s red-headed shadow. On Sun, Sun, Sun, the Elected puts forth a batch of, well, sunny, twangy pop occasiaonally colored by bright horns. Like former Saddle Creek labelmate Conor Oberst, Sennett teeters between precious and wild. While his narratives aren’t as poignant as the Omaha wonderboy’s, Sennett wields his own narrative brush strokes: “When we made love in the van and I drove with your hand on my lap/When San Diego got too unkind, we just picked up and left him behind,” he sings on “It Was Love.” OK, so he’s no Dylan, but Sennett shouldn’t need lyric sheets when he’s got his own pen.
The Elected - Not Going Home.mp3
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