Resistance is futile. Jeffrey Lewis is a hipster folkie singer songwriter who has been around since the mid-1190s as well as a cartoon illustrator. And I misses out on him entirely, mostly because his name is so boring I fell asleep reading it.
So I went into his Pulp opening set Ay Radio City on Wednesday, having decided not to bother reviewing it. But, like a said, resistance is futile. The speed singer, smart as fuck, wildly imagnitive, anti folk (it says here -doesn't seem to actually mean anything) wide boy, blew us away.
It is one song to sing a song to ollistratate a graphic novel you've written.
And it is another thing to make the song about the French Revolution.
But it is something else entirely to precede it with a song about Will Oldham raping you on a subway way platform on the "L" line. We are talking longtterm purview here.
ike this, a sorta folk cum alt Junkyard (the name of his back up band)guitar based rock and roll which fronts a Dylan circa "Positively 4th Street" as sung by Lou Reed reciting an Edward Lear poem -which is about the best I can do with the terrific songs Jeffrey rolled out.
Center stage and bathed in weak blue lights, listening to Will smack one terrific, inventive, wildly literate and amusing and scary nyc disapora track after another is nothing but a revelation : no, not Dylan, it's like he is expanding on Lou Reed's masterpiece New York, without Robert Quine.
A terrific half hour. I can't believe I had never heard him before. Oh, ps? Why no original pix you ask? Here's why:
Grade: A