Jeffrey Lewis – ‘Em Are I (Rough Trade)
5/5
By: Thomas Hannan
I love ‘Slogans’. It isn’t Jeffrey Lewis’ best song, but it’s the first song on what is by far his best album. An album I’ve come to absolutely adore. Just hearing the opening slightly distorted acoustic guitar strums gets me really very excited. Again, it’s not because I really love the song. The song’s OK. But what comes after it is astonishing. And I listen to albums from beginning to end. Hearing ‘Slogans’ reminds me I’m about to have a really brilliant time.
Whilst every Jeffrey Lewis album prior to this has been admittedly charming, there have been one or two standout moments amidst the lo fi scratchiness that have suggested that Lewis was capable of something quite special. These moments, songs like ‘Back When I Was Four’ and ‘Williamsburg Will Oldham Horror’, great though they were, actually served to make the rest of their parent albums seem a little bit... worse. Or just disappointingly un-ambitious, at least. What ‘Em Are I does so well (‘Slogans’ aside) is have ten of these moments, the quality not dipping at all, once it gets going. Prepare for ‘Roll Bus Roll’ (the best song about sleeping, ever), ‘Broken Broken Broken Heart’, ‘If Life Exists?’, ‘Whistle Past The Graveyard’ and the rest of it to rocket to the top of your list of favourite Jeffrey Lewis songs.
It’s also going to be the best source of witty lyricisms you’ll have stumbled across since Morrissey stopped being at all funny or insightful. ‘If Life Exists’ is absolutely full of them – “it’s all easier said than done and it’s not even easy to say” being a favourite, ‘Broken Broken Broken Heart’ bettering it with its expert summation of what it feels like to be a completely useless male wondering about the strength of his own love for another – “Can I tell it that I don’t care if it live or dies, can I hate it and just wait and see? Can I send it to the arms of another man less cruel and curious than me?”.
Elsewhere, ‘Whistle Past The Graveyard’ amuses with its musings on brain eating Zombies and the nature of mortality (““if I was in hell I would be happy knowing other people were in heaven, it would make hell not so hellish...”), ‘The Upside Down Cross’ is a collaboration with brother Jack in which a bickering couple head to Florida to save the manatee, and I don’t know what ‘To Be Objectified’ is about, but the fact that it gains a different meaning every time I listen to it is testament to its greatness.
“It’s hard to get too bored if you pick the right two chords”. When said chords form the backing of some of the most simplistically beautiful melodiousness and thought provoking wordplay of recent years, it’s hard to be anything other than enthralled.
Artists in this article: Jeffrey Lewis
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