Band I Want to Kiss: Rilo Kiley

I should probably send a gift basket over to the LiveJournal headquarters as a thank you for all of the wonderful it's brought to my life. If it weren't for one simple website, I wouldn't know Bethany or the subsequent people I met through her; I wouldn't know Janaí-Chanelle or have my beautiful Electric Youth vinyl she gifted to me during her visit last month; I wouldn't know Kylee or Sara, even though they live just right over the bridge in the city of Philadelphia; and I might not have discovered Rilo Kiley during a time that I needed them most. Don't get me wrong, dudes, there have totally been bad LiveJournal times. Like the bitter entries Ashley and I would write during our various breakups, or my first e-BFF who stopped being my friend and with no explanation as to why (MARIA I STILL MISS YOU), or the old accounts out there under my name in some way that still exist and probably hold secrets and old feelings that would make me so sad to read right now. But! Rilo Kiley <3 (I feel the urge to write at thesis-paper-length about this fucking band, but I won't! Because this is a blog and not a book.)

After high school, things were pretty lonely for me. My best friends were off and away at college and I had no clue what I was doing; my whole life felt strange and new to me. I forget how I came upon LiveJournal, but having the opportunity to connect with strangers was something I'd found interesting since my days in various chat rooms (remember chat rooms, you guys?????), so signing up for a public way to express my feelings seemed like the next logical step (remember public ways of sharing your feelings, you guys?????). When creating your profile, there's an option to list your interests and, after spending some time trolling around to various user accounts while on the hunt for new friends, I noticed a thing called Rilo Kiley popping up a lot as a thing girls liked. Being on the Internet, I searched for and found out what Rilo Kiley meant and was immediately and fully enamored. Jenny Lewis was unlike anyone I'd cared about up to that point, what with her babydoll dresses and knee socks and that pout of hers. And that one dude from Salute Your Shorts and Boy Meets World! (jk, Blake Sennett, I love you and please marry me, I'm sure you read this)

And those songs! Oh, the songs. They've got songs for all sorts of thoughts and feelings that you can force into a mold of meaning relating to whatever it is that is going on in your life. I can think of at least four songs right now that could honestly explain how I feel, currently, better and more poignantly than any of my words could. They have an angst that never dies, just as the teens and adult teens who listen to them do. Their songs have helped with breakups and crushes and solitude more in my life than any other thing. Rilo Kiley was my very first step away from pop music (I never left, I just took a step away!) and into this ~indie scene~ and all of the dope things I've come to love along with it. (I might not have appreciated The Wizard if not for Jenny Lewis! (I definitely would've still loved Troop Beverly Hills, though, because HELLO SHELLEY LONG, DUH)) They are pretty much the reason I look how I look and talk how I talk and am how I am right now, at this very moment, in this dumb world. Jenny's person, the band's everything: I breathe and bleed Rilo Kiley. I love them a ton. And I want to kiss them (a ton).

And now they're releasing new old things! Someone please buy me Rkives (the deluxe bundle, you dingus!) because I am very poor :(