Jenny Lewis’s fifth studio album, Joy’All, is an endearing snapshot of the singer-songwriter’s casual, openhearted Cali-bohemian ethos, with easy, blithe hooks to match. Lewis tapped seemingly ubiquitous Nashville producer Dave Cobb to helm the album, but despite some sweet pedal steel here and there, she hasn’t gone country—or, for that matter, yacht rock, a term some inexplicably use to describe lead single “Puppy and a Truck” when it first dropped in 2021.
Lewis’s influences remain eclectic enough, from ’70s folk-rock on “Apples and Oranges” to sultry R&B on “Giddy Up.” Cobb never lets these songs stray too far from his usual easygoing, acoustic-based zone, somewhat blunting the album’s range. But Lewis still manages to push herself into new territory, committing to sunny melodicism with an unapologetic zeal that suggests her unlikely stint opening for Harry Styles in 2021 may have influenced her as much as working with Cobb.
It’s a good thing, too, because Lewis’s witty, self-aware songwriting on Joy’All lends itself well to contemporary pop. She’s all about zen vibes and sex, not to mention “Fire and lightning, PCP, and Mary Jane,” as she puts it in the freewheeling “Love Feel.” On “Apples and Oranges,” she offers an ex a teen-style summation of her latest rebound: “He’s hot and he’s cool/He just isn’t you.”
Right from the outset, Lewis certainly makes no bones about what her priorities are these days. “I’m not a psycho/I’m just trying to get laid,” she proclaims on album opener “Psychos.” The song initially seems to be approaching an examination of the ever more prevalent role of mental health in modern dating—“How can I help you?/When you are up and down”—but Lewis quickly undercuts the gravitas: “This shit is crazy town.”
Joy’All’s tone is light, even flippant at times. After a scant 10 tracks and barely 30 minutes, you might be left wanting a deeper exploration of some of Lewis’s more complicated feelings about this new phase of her life, which she had once anticipated with consternation on songs like “Just One of the Guys,” from 2014’s The Voyager. But Joy’All never feels like anything less than the honest reflections of someone who’s genuinely just trying to figure her shit out.
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