Jeffrey Lewis’s songs are open to interpretation

Jeffrey Lewis’s lyrics have drawn some high-profile admirers, but some people just don’t get them at all

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      All is not exactly as it seems in the world of Jeffrey Lewis, this no doubt surprising those who feel they’ve gotten to know him through his records and comic books. The New York City–based singer and artist lets this slip, somewhat exasperatedly, near the end of an interview to promote his latest release, A Turn in the Dream-Songs. His beef? Thanks to, well, pretty much everything he’s put out since surfacing a decade ago in the City That Never Sleeps, people seem to file him in the category of wonderfully whimsical.

      “I’m always surprised that people think of me as this upbeat, if not some sort of humorist, then at least a lighthearted creator,” the thoughtful singer says, on the line from a Baltimore tour stop. “I think that so much of what I do leaves me always scared that people are going to think that it’s too depressing. I’m always consciously trying to add more upbeatness because otherwise what I’m doing is just going to get mired in complete darkness.”

      That the masses don’t always understand where Lewis is coming from isn’t surprising, even if A Turn in the Dream-Songs isn’t exactly the kind of record that makes one think of messengers of misery like Ian Curtis and Kurt Cobain. You want funny, albeit in a decidedly offbeat way? Cue up the melancholy “When You’re by Yourself”, in which, over soft-glow acoustic guitar and mournful strings, we get one man’s account of what it means to be sitting at a table alone at a restaurant. The condensed version goes something like this: you end up having to put your jacket and backpack on the seat beside you, and then not only do you have to take them with you when you’re going to the bathroom, but you also have to tell the waitress you’re not dining and dashing, but are instead just going to the bathroom. Lighthearted? For sure, but there’s also a deeper meaning, the song a reflection of what it was like to live in pre–Rudy Giuliani New York.

      “That comes from growing up in a New York City where you never leave anything unattended, you never leave a car or a door unlocked, you never take your eyes off your stuff for a second,” Lewis says. “New York is a lot safer now, but that stuff was still really instilled in me. And I guess there’s something humorous in the extent of the desperation.”

      Sometimes, Lewis finds himself so misunderstood that it blows his mind.

      “There are so many misinterpretations it will drive me crazy if I think about it or dwell on it,” he reveals. “I read so many reviews where I’m like, ‘How in the hell are they interpreting it that way—this song or this album or this performance?’ It’s like, ‘Is it not obvious that it’s clearly not about that?’ ”

      Lewis cites “Krongu Green Slime” off the new disc as a prime example.

      “All these reviews have described it as a brilliant parody of capitalism,” he says. “To me, it’s more of an atheist horror-tale thing—almost like a Shel Silverstein kind of thing. Something very bleak.”

      Perhaps where Lewis comes from—think freak-folk central—has a lot to do with how he’s perceived. Raised in New York City, he enrolled in Purchase College, State University of New York, in the ’90s as a literature major. During his time there, he discovered a like-minded community of musicians—including electro-warrior Dan Deacon and Regina Spektor—and later befriended the likes of the Moldy Peaches.

      “A lot of people that went to this college were either artistic or just general weirdos from around New York state who wanted to go to someplace that they could afford,” Lewis says. “It was a cheap school with no entertainment budget, with no college town—it was in the middle of nowhere. There was nothing to do there. It was a very uninspired, blank canvas where you would go insane with boredom. We had no money, so it became ‘Hey, let’s do something interesting to entertain each other so we don’t lose our minds over the course of four years.’ That made it a real incubator for desperate creativity.”

      That would get Lewis thinking that he might like to try his hand at music.

      “I was a literature major making comic books and mostly into writing and drawing all the time,” he says. “I would do music, but more for the sake of doing weird stuff—there was really not anything worth recording. In a lot of ways I was just kind of an observer of all the stuff going on around me. I was a big part of the scene, in that I was always there, but I certainly wasn’t a musician or a singer or a songwriter.”

      Things have certainly changed today, with Lewis signed to the prestigious Rough Trade label. During the past decade, he’s proven himself nothing if not prolific, releasing seven studio albums and a torrent of tapes, EPs, and singles. Somewhere he also finds time to work on his Fuff comic-book series and act as a sometime columnist for the New York Times.

      His records have earned him no shortage of high-profile admirers. Consider, for example, his being hailed as nothing short of a genius by Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker, who’s described Lewis as one of the best lyricists working in pop today. Based on note-perfect A Turn in the Dream-Songs standouts like “Time Trades” and “How Can It Be”, one would have difficulty arguing otherwise. Also consider that members of acts like the Vaselines and Au Revoir Simone jumped at the chance to perform with Lewis and his band on the disc.

      And yet, all that has done little to make the singer a household name, this driven home by the new album’s propulsive “Cult Boyfriend”, in which he intones: “I might not be in magazines as a heart-throb face/But in a few devoted hearts I’ve found a strong fan base.” Such lines are delivered in a fashion that might very well be described as bright-eyed, but, tellingly, the song isn’t entirely what it seems. Get Lewis talking and he’ll admit that he really is puzzled as to why he’s only worshipped by a few in the know. Yes, he has a dark side.

      “We’re in a weird position in the music industry,” Lewis suggests. “We’ve got a fan base, and I feel like me and my band have had a lot of creative successes over the last 10 years. I’m happy with the shows we’ve played, the music that we’ve made, and our whole approach to being a band, being on tour, and making albums. There are a lot of triumphs. The missing piece is that we are still completely only word-of-mouth in the U.S., our home country. We’re almost entirely under the radar of the official music industry.

      “We’re on a tour right now,” he continues, “for our new album, and we can’t even get a show in Washington, D.C., Boston, Los Angeles, Seattle. The clubs won’t even book us because they’ve never heard of us. There’s a disconnect. But maybe it’s because we’re not for everybody, and I’m perfectly fine with that. I never had any expectation that what I create would be something that everyone would like. But I’m pleased that a few people do.” -

      Jeffrey Lewis & the Junkyard play the Biltmore Cabaret tonight (December 1).

      Comments

      1 Comments

      A. MacInnis

      Dec 2, 2011 at 5:52pm

      Hope people went to this show! BTW, there are some great comic book "movies" by Jeffrey Lewis on Youtube - check out his "Legend of The Fall," for instance -
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tP_Dk81f9fg

      If you poke around, you'll also see him performing with the Holy Modal Rounders' Peter Stampfel, with whom he's released an album, and even the late Tuli Kupferberg - like this global warming song based on Dylan's "My Back Pages:"
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0e-9bG7vvWk

      Okay, so Tuli mostly just sits there...