Sometimes a moment makes a song. The bit in 'Paint's Peeling' when you realise Rilo Kiley have created the whole of the preceding two minutes twenty-eight seconds to build up to this, when the guitars crash into 'hey, how could you love me this way?' and everything explodes into a monumental wall of sound that takes you by surprise because nothing thus far has suggested they could make this kind of noise. The split second when 'The Good That Won't Come Out' morphs into a Bright Eyes song, with pounding drums, glockenspiels and bells and reverberating cymbals, and how the track is over far too soon after that transformation. The point in 'A Better Son/Daughter' when Jenny Lewis suddenly launches into 'and sometimes when you're on, you're really f**king on', and her voice almost cracks under the weight of the words 'you'll fight and you'll make it through' when you know she's only singing for herself, like you do when you sing along. It's beautiful. Actually, the whole thing is beautiful, from the breathtaking frankness, crushing and amazing at the same time, of opening a song with the line 'sometimes in the morning I am petrified and can't move', to the military drums that underpin every word, whether Lewis sounds softly content or on the verge of choking with angry tears.
The album isn't all perfect moments, of course. When guitarist Blake Sennett takes over vocal duties, the tracks sound like hastily-written filler, and the accusations of overt tweeness levelled at the band occasionally feel justified (see 'Capturing Moods'). But Rilo Kiley are much, much more than friends of Conor Oberst, or just another Saddle Creek band. They sound passionate about surviving, and manage to blend that idealistic enthusiasm and verve with the reality of bitterness and disappointment, singing of the literal execution of all things, revelling in 'loving things just because, like the sick and the dying'. Sometimes a few special moments make it worth sifting through the ordinary, and this (mostly) gorgeous album is proof of that.