Featured image Jacob Blickenstaff
Jeffrey Lewis is the king of US DIY music. Throughout the last ten years he has dedicated himself to crossing melancholy folk and pure garage rock doing it by himself as much as he can. Out of music Lewis passes time by writing and drawing comic books, often accompanying songs live with his drawings (He’s also a big fan of Watchmen by Alan Moore so you can tell he’s a bit of a legend already.).
Here he returns with a sort of concept album regarding Manhattan and being an artist in New York. Scowling Crackhead Ian describes his fear of this slightly crazy dude he knew during his childhood called Ian and their interactions around NY. The guitar picking is sweet and the background noises (cars and people talking and stuff) give it a nice little atmosphere. In the same vein is Thunderstorm which starts with a reverb-y feedback loop before going into a slacker rock acoustic guitar strum. I feel it’s unfair to describe Lewis as ‘Slacker Rock’ because he clearly works extremely hard on his records, both lyrically and musically.
Sad Screaming Man is a strange and twee story about the man next door screaming in the night and keeping Lewis up. It’s fast as fuck and pretty funny too. The shouted chorus “Dark night of the soul! Dark night of our hearts!” is cool, but can sometimes cross the line from twee to cringe, but is pretty solid nonetheless. The 8-minute long Back To Manhattan is a touching slow jam about going back home after a date, that really gives this album a wintery feel. There’s an over abundance of ‘summery’ albums, so it’s nice to get a little wintery feeling in here.
The songs Support Tours and Have a Baby both facets of artistry, the former asking why as artists people continue to fuck each other over, despite everyone having been in that situation at one time. It approaches this well, ending with Lewis saying ‘I’m a working class musician with no funding in my country’ I feel you Jeffrey. The latter is a discordant garage tune, within which he discusses his image, the salient message being that it will only last until he “throws that bull shit out and has a baby”
Finally, if you had forgotten that Lewis has a sense of humour, you get his adaptation of Poe’s ‘The Raven’ using Jewish sociolect. It’s funny and well delivered.. This album is a garage rock album of a high calibre, and honestly what more would you expect for Jeffrey Lewis?
He plays The NAC on the 18th of December, get yourselves to it Norwich.
8.5
PLUM 