On the easy-going 'Joy'all,' Jenny Lewis defiantly preaches the pursuit of happiness

https://www.npr.org/2023/06/08/ [login to see] /jenny-lewis-joyall-review
"I once knew someone who said that he didn't believe in the pursuit of happiness," Jenny Lewis recently said in an interview about Joy'all, her new solo album. "And I thought, wow, how unfortunate." The comment sums up a kind of wry wisdom that seems to characterize Lewis' music: the belief that happiness isn't a given but must be pursued — and that it ought to be, and that naysayers deserve little more energy than a gentle shrug or an eye-roll. The narrators of Lewis' songs — on her previous solo records, but even back in Rilo Kiley, her beloved, early 2000s indie-rock band — often seem to have a preternatural understanding that things change; that life goes on, for better or worse. This comment about the pursuit of happiness is perhaps a more polite version of an idea delivered in "Puppy and a Truck," an early single off Joy'all that contains a sort of thesis statement for the record: "If you feel like giving up," Lewis drawls, "Shut up."