Rilo Kiley frontwoman Jenny Lewis has made exactly the album she needed to make at this point in her career. While not as staggering as the second Rilo Kiley disc The Execution of All Things (2002)—still her finest work—her first solo album, Rabbit Fur Coat (Team Love), is an often-intriguing side road for her talents, and something of a corrective to the band's most recent effort, the all-over-the-place More Adventurous (2004).

As has been recounted endless times, Lewis is the former child actress (Troop Beverly Hills, the Fred Savage vehicle The Wizard) who formed Rilo Kiley in L.A. with her ex-boyfriend, guitarist Blake Sennett. From their first album, Take-Offs and Landings (2001), the band revealed a talent for ambitious, pretty pop songs abetted by literate musings on love, failure and the specter of death that looms over all such inter- and transactions. (An aside: someday, someone will properly recognize the progenitor of this subgenre, Neil Finn.)

You Are What You Love: Jenny Lewis takes cues from Loretta Lynn, Laura Nyro, Bob Dylan and the Traveling Wilburys on Rabbit Fur Coat.

Rilo Kiley became seriously great on Execution, with its expanded instrumental palette and tighter, more articulate songs. It's something of a down-home epic, a loose concept album about panic, dread and memory that nonetheless by its end leaves the listener feeling euphoric, rather than deflated. The group became road warriors and Lewis added background chirps to The Postal Service's much-beloved album Give Up, only increasing her cachet. (It didn't hurt, of course, that she is also a good-looking, red-haired woman.)

The band was poised for some kind of breakthrough when More Adventurous was released on the band's Brute/Beaute imprint and distributed by Warner Brothers. While not terrible, the album seemed utterly without focus; one minute Rilo Kiley melded The Bangles with musings on mortality, the next they tried to channel Etta James. Many of the songs weren't fully realized till they'd spent some time in the band's live act. When the band played the Troc last May, the electro-pop of "Accidntel Deth" and the folky "More Adventurous" had finally assumed some real shape.

Which brings us to Rabbit Fur Coat. Surely, many listeners will first notice the album's delvings into country and gospel. But the slide guitars, clip-clop rhythms and churchy harmonies signify not so much a stylistic choice, but merely a more intimate setting than you might find on a Rilo Kiley album, focusing more on the singer and the song. Just as crucially, Rabbit Fur Coat proves that—contrary to More Adventurous—Lewis can in fact pick a sound and stick with it for a little while.

It's easy to link this album to forebears like Loretta Lynn or Laura Nyro, but an equally strong influence is Bob Dylan. He gets name-checked on the gorgeous "The Changing Sky," which itself melds the off-the-cuff twang of Nashville Skyline with the subtle lyric-weaving of Blood on the Tracks. More blatantly, Lewis turns the Traveling Wilburys' hit "Handle with Care" into an indie campfire sing-along, roping in Ben Gibbard, M. Ward and Conor Oberst to share vocal duties.

But the most prominent voice on the album is her own. As on all of her finest work—Rilo Kiley songs like "A Better Son/Daughter" or "Does He Love You?"—Lewis avoids cliches in order to hone in on details of life that are rarely captured in song. Throughout the album, she wields unexpected turns of phrase, shifts in time, repeating themes (i.e., parents) and other literary devices. Arguably more than any other songwriter today, she's a prime example of the good a well-used bookcase can do for one's songcraft. On the title track, her word choice steadily steers the song from cloying to heartbreaking. She turns the title of "You Are What You Love" from a resigned sigh to an endless curse through her precise descriptions of a codependent relationship. From the first line—"This is no great illusion/ when I'm with you I'm looking for a ghost"—the whole song is just about flawless.

Although there are missteps, like the interminable extended outros of "Happy" and "Born Secular" (and the former gets a reprise), Rabbit Fur Coat achieves exactly what it's supposed to do. The album draws you in further to Lewis' carefully crafted but always surprising world.