Jenny Lewis

Wed., Oct. 1, 8 p.m., $25, Keswick Theatre, 291 Keswick Ave., Glenside, 215-572-7650, keswicktheatre.com.

by Patrick Rapa

Rock/pop

Look, we're all complex organisms, full of blood and goo, motivated by fear and restlessness and prone to outbursts. Most of us just end up tangled messes because of it. Not Jenny Lewis. She makes complicated look good. On her brand new Acid Tongue (Warner), Lewis wraps her flaws up in pretty strings, belts them out from on high and hires some angelic backup singers to underscore the message. (And what a choir: Johnathan Rice, M. Ward, Elvis Costello, Chris Robinson and Zooey Deschanel all make walk-ons, not to mention two singing Lewis sisters and her harmonica-playing father.) "I'm a liar!" she croons in exactly the way Henry Rollins did not: strong, melodic, sincere. Then she takes a breath and says it again and again and again. "I'm a liar and you don't know what I done," she concludes. Next verse she's sighing about being unlucky in love. Whatever, hon, you're a liar — that might've been a contributing factor. And therein lay Lewis' most effective storyteller's trick, creating an unreliable narrator and challenging the listener to make out the truth through a hazy lens. And whether she's leading a rollicking gospel number into a snake-handling frenzy or leaning up against a piano and cooing about love, Lewis makes you see the world the way she does. It's pretty simple, really.

Wed., Oct. 1, 8 p.m., $25, Keswick Theatre, 291 Keswick Ave., Glenside, 215-572-7650, keswicktheatre.com.