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Slogans starts Em I Are in great fashion with growling Lewis yelling out a tale of ''cigarettes and needles'' strewn about the streets before reaching a simple, unexpected one line chorus: ''Everyone you meet is not better than you''. It's catchy and pollution-scarred and recalls Jonathan Richman, another iconoclastic NYC native.
Roll Bus Roll is a bit more stereotypically city folk. Here Lewis sounds rather effete, even if he is singing about old bodegas and Harlem. It's pleasant, but hardly essential.
If Life Exists is worse, full of simplistic, platitudinous conversational drivel. After singing about being ill, JL sings, ''When I get healthy I wouldn't take it for granted."
For all the twee acoustica, there are still impressive surprises lurking. Album standout The Upside-down Cross is written by Lewis's brother and bandmate Jack. It's a fantastic eight minutes of mariachi trumpet, feedback and electric fury. Imagine Nick Cave and Calexico covering Neil Young's Hey Hey, My My with nothing but guns, cacti and tequila for company.
Bugs & Flowers meanwhile, has a sweetly Californian pastoral tone, Good Old Pig, Gone To Avalon is a jumpy banjo-flecked ditty that ends with a marvellously incongruous guitar solo and It's Not Impossible is a quiet, uplifting dusty moment of pedal-steel bliss.
An album of mixed quality, then, and one which may lead many to conclude Lewis is a more accomplished talent when he leaps away from the musical and lyrical conventions of his background. --Lou Thomas
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Customer Reviews
Lewis has a rare gift in that he creates brilliant conceptual art that you feel like you could do yourself - you couldn't, of course, otherwise you would have done it already - while inhabiting the persona of the geeky introvert that would actually like to meet you, rather than the other way around.
Yeah, yeah, but what about the album? What about it? It's great. It's funny, moving, thought-provoking, fun... walking the fine line between trashy punk and introspective folk, Jeff lays his soul bare, and seems to be telling you everything he's thinking.
There's nothing I don't like about it - barring the slightly overlong outro on "Minnie the Moocher". Even brother Jack's "The Upside Down Cross" seems essential after a few listens. At first it sounded completely out of place, especially when a minute or so in you hear Jeff announce, "this song was written by Jack...", like Spinal Tap's David St Hubbins distancing himself from Derek Smalls' "Jazz Odyssey". But that track actually serves as a nice bridge point between the two halves of the album.
Now, I'm not going to give it 5 stars, but take it from me, the 4 stars I am giving it are a VERY GOOD 4 stars. Not your average 4 stars.
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