One thing that’s nice about Life Is Beautiful is that sets tend to run smoothly—for the most part. Still, no festival experience is ever exactly on time, nor do things go completely according to plan, so when Jenny Lewis still wasn’t on stage 10 minutes after her set time, I was inclined to shrug it off. Technical difficulties happen.
Life Is Beautiful
At 8:27—seventeen minutes after schedule—Lewis and company lit up the stage with “Silver Linings,” a single from Rilo Kiley’s final, pre-breakup album Under the Blacklight. And the wait was worth it, because the sound was incredible. “It’s good to be home guys, what’s up?” Lewis says. It felt like a stretch—but in this city of migrants, can we really be that picky when someone claims Vegas as their roots? Especially if that person is Jenny Lewis? If only more artists of her stature called Vegas home. Mi casa, su casa.
Lewis’ latest single, “Just One of the Guys,” was a lighthearted, bouncy contrast to the rest of the set—which ventured into slightly darker territory, pulling from solo album Acid Tongue, a few Voyager tracks: “Head Underwater,” “Slippery Slopes” (all which sounded significantly richer, grittier and more soulful performed live) and another Blacklight cut, “Moneymaker.”
“This is for you, meadow dwellers!” Lewis shouted before diving into the nine-minute blues jam, “Next Messiah,” also from Acid Tongue. Props to Lewis for playing a song that references “A cocktail waitress who thinks she’s an artist,” in Vegas.
Unfortunately, going on late did cut in to Lewis’ set time, which means the crowd got robbed of at least one song. “I guess we only have one more,” Lewis said before bringing her sister on stage, dedicating the beautiful, acoustic tear-jerker “Acid Tongue” to LGBT rights activist and Las Vegan, Vincent Frey, who passed away in January. “Some of your rights here are because of him.”
