This is how she feels

In "Self-Reliance," Emerson writes, "A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition as if every thing were titular and ephemeral but he." I wish I'd written about Jenny Lewis' "Rise Up With Fists!" in February; let's say that it's taken seven months for me to assess its truths. Most of the songs on Rabbit-Fur Coat range from good to excellent, but the third track is sung in a voice so unwavering and graceful that I can understand why the surrounding tracks carpeted its path with palm fronds*. "What am I fighting for? The cops are at the front door," Lewis sings. "I can't escape that way, the windows are in flames." Imminence as plashless as Lewis' seeks neither comfort nor escape. She's as beyond death-or-glory shtick as Joe Strummer was on "This is England." History isn't the nightmare from which she can't awake -- the present is. What good are maxims? This is how she feels.

Emerson again: "I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways."

*Chrissie Hynde on "Hymn to Her" comes to mind -- the dusky tonal control -- although Hynde, uncharacteristically, exposes herself to such a degree that her voice dredges painful ambivalences in a line like "Something is lost, something is found" that Lewis has long since abandoned.