The joy and deliverance of an undead Rilo Kiley

Indie rock used to float on invisible currents, didn’t it? How big is a band? Who are their fans? Which songs are the “hits”? In the age of burning discs and bit torrents, sales figures were probably a less reliable metric for success than clicks are here in the immaterial streamscape of the now.

All of which is to say, Rilo Kiley didn’t seem surprised to fill the Met to the rafters for their first Philly show since June of ’08, but I was. The first time I saw Jenny Lewis and Blake Sennett — exes /bandmates turned ex-bandmates who are now bandmates once again — Rilo Kiley was opening for Superchunk at the Troc, and I’m pretty sure I never saw them anywhere bigger than the Electric Factory. The Met’s a 3,500-seat century-old opera house.

So props to the kids who do their homework and the oldheads who take their Aleve, because most everybody stood from the first song (“The Execution of All Things”) to the last (“Pictures of Success”) at this Thursday night concert, and damn if we didn’t remember the words.

“You say I choose sadness, that it never once has chosen me.” That line looks so emo on the page, but Lewis sings it strong and it stung. And then she mutters: “maybe you’re right.”

The Rilo Kiley vibe is, and was, if not joyful then cathartic. Catchy, dramatic, confident but kinda nerve-wracking melodies, always ready for a mood swing. Sennett’s agile guitar provides the hooks and the riffs to nod your head to, even when the lyrics get dark with irony, defeatism, and apocalyptic anxiety. Some of this could’ve been written yesterday.

“Let’s get together and talk about the modern age,” Lewis sings in “The Good that Won’t Come Out” and you can feel our narrator’s insincerity evaporating. Pretty soon they’re watching the ground disappear, helpless, hapless. The audience was extra into that one. So that’s a hit. Crowd reaction is a pretty good metric.

Midway through the set, you remember how often Lewis alludes to a prevailing numbness in her lyrics. Whether the songs are personal or told through personas, she opts for first person for the heavy stuff. She’s “almost dead,” she tells us. She’s a “walking corpse.” Broken hearts are counted on broken fingers.

I do this thing where I think I’m real sick
But I won’t go to the doctor to find out about it
‘Cause they make you stay real still in a real small space
As they chart up your insides and put them on display
They’d see all of it, all of me, all of it.

It’s a lovely song, I promise. Fun, even.

Oh man, “It’s a Hit” is still a banger. Simple but infectious. The lyrics harken back to time when George W. Bush felt like a national rock bottom as they tell the story of an ape rushing to war, deploying troops with carelessness and poor judgement, “like salt in a shaker.” Surely the country could get no dumber, no more cruel, no more shameful.

The evening’s emotional twin peaks arrived just before the encore, a pair of songs that unleash the band’s power and range.

First, the plain spoken and forever-modern angst of “A Better Son/Daughter.” You know it: the one with no chorus, the one that’s always sort of uncoiling, the one that switches from first-person despair to second-person puppetry to point the finger at the listener, because it’s your angst too. You feel bad. You crawl back into bed. You miss the days when you “loved things just because.”

And then the chrysalis breaks. Drums. Guitar. Adrenaline.

“Sometimes when you’re on, you’re really fucking on.”

Yes. The moment we were waiting for.

It’s not just the curses, although every Jenny Lewis f-bomb is an exuberant sing-along opportunity. It’s also the explosive awakening to the resilience of your somehow still-beating heart. Not so numb after all.

“You’ll fight, and you’ll make it through. You’ll fake it if you have to.” And later: “You’ll be awake. You’ll be alert. You’ll be positive though it hurts.”

The song popped often up in Jenny’s solo setlists, in the Rilo Kiley-less years, because it’s what the people want. And while isn’t hopeful exactly — “the lows are so extreme that the good seems fucking cheap,” she concedes (and hey, another well timed f-bomb) — it is utterly affecting. Tears welling. Goose bumps bumping.

After that came  “Portions for Foxes,” a more traditionally arranged number, but no less impressive for its indie-rock majesty, even as Jenny tells us she’s bad news, again and again. So Jenny.

Then she gets to the part with the title. “We’ll all be portions for foxes,” she says.

Twenty years on and that line still puzzles and delights. There are a trillion billion songs in the known universe about how life only ends one way, and this is another, I suppose. We’re just meat and bones. But portions? And why foxes? Only Jenny Lewis makes me think about some nameless butcher chopping me into steaks, and leaving them out on the back stoop for the waiting wildlife. On plates, maybe? Chills.

After the encore some of the heaviness had lifted, or we felt too good to hurt along too much. I mean there was “More Adventurous” and “Pictures of Success,” but in the middle was goofy old favorite “Frug.” It’s about all the dances she can or cannot do, and while she does say “I cannot fall in love” a half dozen times, it’s an upbeat little song, and we are happy to hear she’s been dancing.

Singer-songwriter Natalie Bergman, formerly of the Chicago band Wild Belle, opened the show, and she has got a voice for belting as well. Her music is groovy and easygoing, and occasionally reminiscent of Jenny’s Lewis’s gently country solo stuff. Her album My Home is Not in This World released in July, and she appeared on World Cafe last month. Rilo Kiley’s tour continues through late October, and you can find the full dates here.