In the 1930s the writer Gertrude Stein traveled to the Bay Area, where she visited her hometown of Oakland. When she arrived, she discovered that her childhood home had been razed and in its place erected new, anonymous buildings. It was a different and less inviting place, one that did not match up to her memory. In her journals, which were published as Everybody’s Autobiography in 1937, she wrote about the experience and concluded about Oakland, “there is no there there.” Jenny Lewis examines a similarly thwarted nostalgia on her third solo album, The Voyager, and on the opening track “Head Underwater”, she sings, “I never thought I would ever be here/ Looking out on my life as if there was no there there.” It’s a pretty devastating admission of disconnection with oneself, as though the Jenny Lewis of today had no means of identifying with any of the Jenny Lewises of the past.
Not that you would immediately sense such alienation in “Head Underwater”. The beats thump with a laidback bustle, the synths shimmer as if submerged in a pool, the Watson Twins harmonize perfectly in the background, and Lewis’ vocals swoop sharply and assertively, with a slight ascending vocal arc that conveys optimism rather than its opposite. After the first verse, however, a dark, post-punk guitar theme emerges, more East than West Coast, casting a darker spell. The song strikes a particularly Californian balance of sun and sadness, and this glossy rumination is Lewis’ true milieu: If her trio of solo albums all sound different, they emanate from the same perspective. It’s been four years since she released that Jenny and Johnny album and six since she released her last solo album; even though the new album falters a bit, it’s nice to see the world from that point of view again.
The Voyager is defined and motivated by a sense of personal nostalgia, as these songs sift through Lewis’ past to find some key to her present. There are passing references to the L.A. Riots and 9/11, which act as clearly identifiable landmarks in in her (and many people's) life. There are musings on her past selves, such as the “furious and restless” teenager in “Late Bloomer” or the woman chasing an ex on “She’s Not Me”. If this is Lewis’ most adult album—which is arguable, as the self-possession she conveys plays as a kind of maturity—then it’s primarily because she’s more adult now, with more experiences and more past selves. These songs wonder not only about how she got where she is, but also where that is exactly. She still sings about cheating on her boyfriend on “Slippery Slopes”, but justifies the discretion by claiming it makes her feel closer to him while she’s on tour: “If for just one second it helps us to remember that we like each other the most.”
The album title and its NASA allusion may refer to the rocket-fueled momentum with which “every boy and girl” flies through life, as Lewis muses on the title track. But the word also applies to her approach to making music. Especially as a solo artist apart from Rilo Kiley, she has moved from one style to the next, trying on genres and traditions like an actress visiting the wardrobe department. It was rhinestones and Nudie suits for her debut, Rabbit Fur Coat, which plumbed the Golden State’s country and country-rock history. She explored psych-pop on her 2008 follow-up Acid Tongue.
By contrast, The Voyager is not quite so easily summed up. It’s not anchored in one particular scene, but plays as broadly California, with sly nods to the Byrds in the guitars, the Go-Go’s in the vocals, and Randy Newman in the wry humor. On the other hand, the album is produced to sound produced—that is, to remind you that it is the product of a studio, and in particular, the studios of Beck and Ryan Adams. Such an approach lapses occasionally into tedious self-referentiality and even more tedious self-regard, especially on “Aloha & the Three Johns”, about rock stars on vacation. The song plays like an episode of some low-rent game show where the contestants can’t even appreciate the luxury of their surroundings. Of course, the characters aren’t meant to be sympathetic, but they’re not especially relatable either.
Most of the time, however, Lewis is her usual smart, funny self—a singer whose default setting is wry skepticism and a songwriter with a gift for the telling detail and the blunt confession. On the Beck-produced single “Just One of the Guys”, she all but stops the song to underscore a moment of dire self-assessment. As the tempo slow and the instruments all fall away, shit gets real: “There’s only one difference between you and me/ When I look at myself, all I can see/ I’m just another lady without a baby.” Those lines nod to the expectations women of a certain age face not only from others but from themselves, yet Lewis manages to personalize it. Her delivery adds another layer of self-awareness and perhaps something darker, like resignation or regret. It’s a complicated sentiment nestled into a breezy pop tune, which is Lewis’ specialty. That precarious balance means there’s more than enough there there.
