Jeffrey Lewis & Los Bolts – Manhattan CD PROMO
Lewis’ seventh album for Rough Trade, Manhattan, considers a changing New York, sorta kinda, but never head on. Like all his work, it’s thoughtful, humble, introspective, funny and endlessly digressive – perhaps appropriately, given the fine penmanship of his Robert Crumb-ish comic book illustrations, more about the fine detail than the broad strokes. By illustration, the record kicks off with a track called “Scowling Crackhead Ian”, a wistfully performed paean to an old almost-acquaintance and “foul human being” that doubles up as a sort of hymn to an old 1980s Manhattan, where one might get held up with a switchblade on a street corner and robbed of the nickels and dimes you were planning to pour into a Space Harrier arcade machine. Today, Lewis and his unlovely muse still live mere blocks apart – but they’ve still never had a conversation, and Lewis observes him from afar as the traffic hums and the city slowly revolves around them. “How long until we’re old man neighbours,” he sings, “Last tribesmen of the vanished land?”
Lewis is not the shy and faltering troubadour that cut his teeth playing solo songs at the Sidewalk Café back in the late ’90s. Here he fronts Los Bolts, a tin-pot not-quite-band of revolving membership, with producer Brian Speaker, drummer/singer Heather Wagner, bassist/keyboardist Caitlin Grey and guitarist Turner Cody – who played Will Oldham in the memorable video to Lewis’ 2005 single “Williamsburg Will Oldham Horror” – passing through. In places, they whip up quite a fuss, a bristly punk-rock crammed with words and anxiety. “Sad Screaming Old Man” begins as a tale of insalubrious renting, but thin walls and a neighbour prone to the night terrors ratchets up the fear until Lewis – in hammy B-movie voiceover – decides this might be a glimpse of his terrible future. “Have A Baby”, meanwhile, noisily lists the futile pastimes, hobbies and “bullshit” with which the childless fill their time – before a twist in which Lewis reconfirms his pledge to the geek way of life.
If Los Bolts occasionally shamble, they also have a subtle, playful command. “Thunderstorm” is a soft, dazed bossa nova; “Outta Town”, a beat group jangle with handclaps exploring the sense of inertia when your lover is away; Caitlin Grey sings lead vocal on “Avenue A, Shanghai, Hollywood”, a deadpan tale of city living that recalls ’80s new-wavers The Waitresses; and “The Pigeon”, a take on Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven set to driving, spy-movie funk that Lewis tells with much kvetching and the occasional lapse into Yiddish.
Still, it’s hard to dispute that Lewis’ finest songs are the most simply arranged, where fingerpicking and storytelling take the fore. The wry “Support Tours”, an examination of the life of the support band, told first from the perspective of a band on the way up, feeling screwed – and then as the headliner, being the boss and trying to balance the books. Sings Lewis: “I’m in it for the money, is that funny/I’m a working class musician with no funding in my country…” It winds up with a breathless outro where Lewis takes on the persona of a booking agent, spieling off fees and dates and clauses until the poor musician capitulates.
Then there’s “Back To Manhattan”. A cotton-wool Velvets chug tugged out to eight minutes, it finds Lewis walking with his girlfriend, a Brooklynite, over the Williamsburg Bridge as the sun sets. He’s about to end the relationship – “We’re gonna break up/But I haven’t told you/’Cos the walk’s 40 minutes” – and the song circles and spools, rolls favourite lines around in its palm, considers the future and observes the scenery. Sad and beautiful, it’s like Lewis is trying hold on to the moment for as long as possible – but if you’re waiting for drama, it never comes, and as the two silently drift apart for the last time, you can feel Jeffrey Lewis again melt into the streets of Manhattan; home again.
Label: Rough Trade
Country: UK
Media Condition: Very Good Plus (VG+)
Sleeve Condition: Near Mint (NM or M-)
Plays great but has some superficial marks