Having never heard Rilo Kiley--the older stuff never made its way to me, and the new More Adventurous arrived in the handy-dandy copy-protected-not-to-play-on-my-computer format, meaning I'll never get to hear it, period, unless I acquire it a different way--I figured I'd be the first to make Keith's backlash dreams come true by description alone: woo-hoo, L.A. indie band that used to label with Conor fucking Oberst, subject of the most obtuse review pitch I've ever received from a writer with actual talent and a Christgau description that makes its lead cut sound like the worst piece of self-consciously laborious bullshit ever recorded. (The way he describes those "11-line verse[s] about . . . executions, and pardons that never come from the man 'upstairs'" makes it sound like Anticon at its k-lamest.) But that was before this weekend, specifically Sunday, when I took a break from Bumbershoot with my friends Jen, Martin, and Brian to eat and go record shopping at Easy Street. There, they played More Adventurous and the "I'm bad news" one pricked up my ears. Don't know the title offhand and I don't recall the rest as fondly (hey, Keith, you forgot "uneven"), but that one'll be on my year-end C700 for sure, which makes me not just glad but relieved. Can't get it off the copy they sent me, though. Hmmm--maybe I'll download it.