Jeffrey Lewis is not your average recording artist. Over a span of almost 20 years he’s created a 13-issue comic book series, Fuff; his illustrations have been viewed in The New York Times, Time Out New York and The Guardian. He’s also designed album covers, drawn concert posters, pizza menus and hot sauce labels. His “song/comix” hybrids on the Cuban Missile Crisis and the fall of Rome were commissioned by The History Channel. But he’s also recorded so many EPs and albums since 1997 that it’s hard to keep count, especially since he tries to write at least one new song a week. To say that he’s hyper-productive is impossible to dispute, and his latest album, The EVEN MORE Freewheelin’ Jeffrey Lewis illustrates this is a man who clearly needs to be busy.
The cover recalls Dylan’s The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan but goes one better by featuring Lewis and his girlfriend on New York’s West 4th Street sans clothes. The Dylan comparison is apt in other regards because his songs feature more words than seems humanly possible. ‘Do What Comes Natural’ features little more than a guitar as Lewis reveals his own existential problem. “But if I did what comes natural, I’d just be an asshole, I’d be lonely and broke and probably better off dead.” As the song goes on, he also realizes that life isn’t quite so hard as he may think, “But if you act like at artist then it makes you an artist, if you act like a sleazeball then it makes you a sleaze.” The logic there is as incontrovertible as is his twisted sense of humour.
Plugging in for ‘Sometimes It Hits You’, Lewis and his band rock out with a sense of abandon while he sings about how life seems to catch up you at the moment you least expect it. “You can outsmart all the sadness and outfight with the best/ But sometimes life hits you like a chisel in the chest/ And you say/ Ow, fuck that hurt.” If there is any justice in the world the song deserves to be major hit, it’s as honest as any song ever written and who can’t relate to it?
Throughout the album Lewis finds those odd little truths that seem impossible to deny, from ‘Movie Date’, where he realises that as someone nearing 50, watching films at home with his love becomes a bit of a challenge. “It’s hardly half an hour that I wait dear/ before your tired head drops like a brick/ Does Bill Murray’s day repeat forever/ Does Humphrey Bogart ever find the gold?” To the realisation that despite his best efforts when it comes to sleep, he’s still dependent upon those ‘Tylenol PM’.
No matter what discipline Lewis is working in, he illustrates naked truths with humour and passion impossible to ignore. The EVEN MORE Freewheelin’ Jeffrey Lewis is a journal of discovery leavened with humour and pathos.