I am so absolutely baffled by the number of people enjoying this record that I'm wondering if my copy of it was somehow defective or switched out with something else entirely. Were it not for the lyrics paralleling the track titles, I'd be positive that was the case.

I have been a Rilo Kiley fan since Take Offs and Landings, and while I cannot say that I particularly enjoyed Rabbit Fur Coat, it was -- at its best moments -- somewhat enjoyable and -- at its worst -- tolerable. Such 'praise' would be completely inappropriate for Acid Tongue, which sounds to me like an unfortunate and awkward attempt at alt-country by a songstress that's capable of delivering so much more.

Acid Tongue is especially disappointing because the once quirky, inventive Lewis seems to have adopted such a back-to-roots approach for this album that nearly everything I liked about the music that preceded it has been stripped away as well. I feel as though Jenny Lewis and Rilo Kiley are moving in retrograde: Instead of becoming more innovative and more interesting, they seem to becoming less and less so, and these reaches towards a twangier sound have only 'created' a sound that we've heard before -- except that it has sounded much better when other people did it.

I'm pretty shocked to see so many readers so pleased with this 'effort' -- no one I've spoken to has been particularly fond of it, and obviously, I'm not either. On a scale of 10, this would get a 3. And I'm already wondering if I'm being overly generous.