Thursday, June 02, 2005

Jeffrey Lewis-It's the ones who've cracked that the light shines through (rough trade)

When it comes to Jeffrey Lewis everybody listens attentively, it doesn't matter if you're a trance, strokes, glitch, or an indie fan...His lyrics can soften your heart, stab fork-wise with striking precision in your intimacy..So I can't possibly not be completely subjective when reviewing him.
Before becoming a part of kanal 103 fm, I was such a crazy fan that i taped most of the programmes I liked. One of them was "Doli bese beatnik" (Dolly was a beatnik) that had the exact term that I have now, Sundays from 6 till 8 pm. Going through those tapes, months after I had recorded them, I totally accidently came across this fantastic song "The last time I did acid I went insane" by Jeffrey Lewis. Being a hardcore Moldy Peaches fan, I liked it very much. So much, that I played it over and over and over again. It was love at first listen (and I've never even done acid, but that hardly matters)...I enjoy seeing it happen to almost anyone that hears this song, it never fails to charm you completely, the lyrics, the voice, the music. Perfect. It seems a lot of people have gotten into Jeffrey via this song, hence he somehow became synonim for acid-antifolk..A fact which he doesn't seem to like particularly, hence he writes "No LSD tonight" that has it's place on this album I am listening to at the moment "It's the ones who've cracked that the light shines through"... He's this time accompained by his brother Jack Lewis (bass) and Andrew Griffen (drums).
Even though I can't say I like it as much as his previous stuff, "Don't let the record label take you out to lunch" has to be undoubtedly the best song title ever..Apart from that one, there are 12 other songs that walk on the line between a kimya dawson-ish harisma (Back when I was 4, Alphabet, You don't have to be a scientist to do experiments to your own heart) and weird acoustic punk (No LSD Tonight, If you shoot the head you kill the ghoul). To get the full image, Jeffrey's also good in comics, those low-fi NYC comics...I just hope one day we'll manage to get him here in Skopje.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Word, The last time i did acid, is a sweet freaking song. I dig it.

Anonymous said...

i love you, now..