Jeffrey Lewis
It's the Ones Who've Cracked That the Light Shines Through

THE REVIEW

Did I guess right? Another nerd with a guitar, pimples, and comic books sitting in a smoky East Village room amid extinguished cigarettes and the smell of marijuana? Yes, I guessed right.

Jeffrey Lewis (and here lies the first amusing thing) is the concrete proof that the loser-weirdo-songwriter model is far from dead. Active for quite some time in the underworld of acne-ravaged folksingers (around nineteen ninety-eight when he released his first cassette), he hails from an offshoot of the Fugs (an obscure band dedicated to punk-art and weirditude) and doesn't have a damn thing to say.
His stories have the advantage of not being boring and the downside of managing to entertain even though the subject invariably annoys us. Son of beat parents, terribly trendy in the '90s, he delivers to the audience a fine poker of disconnected words in the work under review.
"It's the ones..." (omitted) is a fine mess of folk devoted to the urban triad of Kimya Dawson, Adam Green, Daniel Johnston (of whom our guy declares himself a godson). Stories of madness, nursery rhymes with numbers, rhymed filth, Spider-Men, popcorn remind us greatly of a version of Milky Whimpshake (which we will discuss) with the power cut off.
We are very happy that no one listens to these records, that these words reach few, and that more and more people devote themselves to ready-made soups.
This review, in addition to transcending mere musical data, aims as an incentive to research, courage, and the support of independent experiences.
To paraphrase: "don't let the record label bring you down."