Tuesday, October 12, 2010

NY Times Review of Jeffrey Lewis - opening for The Vaselines

Jeffrey Lewis and the Junkyard played at Webster Hall last week as part of a show headlined by The Vaselines. Jon Pareles reviewed the show for The New York Times, and while the section on Jeffrey wasn't extensive, it was nice to see that Pareles had some perceptive and positive comments about Jeff's work. Jeff's band, by the way, included Nan Turner and Simon Beins, who each, as you undoubtedly know, play in their own bands and with others connected through Sidewalk, OJ, etc. Jeff has certainly been recognized in the Times before but I always think it's nice when folks on the scene are highlighted in the broader media. Below is an excerpt of the section that mentions Jeffrey. To read the entire article, click here.

Excerpt

Jeffrey Lewis, who opened the show, also keeps his music simple, strumming a few chords on a guitar that may well be held together by the stickers covering its front, and leading a band that piles on a cheerful clutter. But he’s a clever, articulate wordslinger, coming up with rhetorical conceits — one song, “Cult Boyfriend,” compared his romantic appeal to that of cult bands and films — and putting in a lot of preparation.

He’s also a comics artist, and his set included two short films — essentially slide shows of his elaborate drawings — that were finely reasoned histories, in rhyme, of the Soviet Union and the French Revolution, affirming populism through primitivism.

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