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Album Reviews
Album Review: Jeffrey Lewis And The Junkyard – ‘Em Are I (Rough Trade)
By CMU Editorial | Published on Monday 20 April 2009
Jeffrey Lewis has long featured songs that wax neurotic on his fear that his artistic endeavours have somewhat been in vain. Although he has consistently produced outstanding lo-fi anti-folk, he has hardly crept into the mainstream consciousness. It is not a question of record sales. Lewis could be seen retrospectively as one of the finest songwriters of his generation and he has yet to be fully celebrated. ‘Em Are I’ might be the album that rectifies this. The album is much more immediate and polished – in a similar vein to his recent Crass covers album – than his astounding, yet rougher, early albums. In part this is due to his backing band, The Junkyard, which features his brother Jack. However, it still contains Jeff’s nervy and introspective songs that uplift you through a calm wide-eyed fear and shared experience. The marriage of a more muscular music approach is evident early on. Opener ‘Slogans’ has a pop-hook drum and bass (not the genre) intro and then sounds like a geeky intellectual Springsteen song. Only he’s deconstructing the slogans that The Boss uses to rally the blue collar factory boys. Clever bloke; it says something about the New Jersey/Manhattan and Brooklyn cultural schism too. Then, ‘If Life Exists’ is a classic Jeffrey Lewis song that plunges into his existential fear with a soft reverby xylophone and acoustic guitar backing. The same can be said about new single ‘To Be Objectified’. Jack Lewis-written song ‘Upside Down Cross’ is the most daring musical arrangement that Lewis (Jeffrey) has attempted and is mildly psychedelic. However, trying to offer you guys some highlights of this album is like picking your favourite sibling, it’s paining me (and it’s completely arbitrary). What I do know is… it’s really good. PG
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