Jonathan Richman put out a single called "You Can Have a Cell Phone That's Okay But Not Me" as a bonus 7" with the vinyl edition of last year's Because Her Beauty Is Raw and Wild. You could make the same criticisms of it that guys like me tend to make of Jeffrey Lewis-- the recording is almost entirely a delivery system for the words, it's hard to imagine anyone listening to it just for the sounds, and his voice mostly sticks to one or two notes-- but it also happens to be one of my favorite tracks of 2008. Music doesn't have to be about pure sound; used to be it was about emotional connection, too.
"I still don't have a cell phone/ But this seashell gets reception," Lewis sings on "To Be Objectified", a surf-splashed meditation from the neurotic New York singer/songwriter's latest album, 'Em Are I. Like Richman, Lewis is a sharp firsthand observer of what passes for urban bohemia, but one who still puts warts-and-all sincerity before hipster chic. It's an approach that can lead to uneven results, including Lewis' grossly misguided 12 Crass Songs covers disc in 2007. If you're reading this far, though, then Lewis (also, incidentally, an accomplished cartoonist) probably has at least a few songs that will resonate with you.
As on 2006's City & Eastern Songs, Lewis' fourth album of original material again connects best through lyrical details. For instance, Lewis describes the way "a rolled sweatshirt makes the window soft" on "Roll Bus Roll", the album's lush, loping ramshackle-folk reverie about having too much past and leaving the city behind. Wesley Willis never had a Greyhound bus ride like this. The garage-rockers aren't far behind, whether Lewis is mustering up an unusual degree of self-confidence on opener "Slogans" ("Everyone you meet is not better than you") or extending a sadomasochistic but evocative relationship metaphor on "Broken Broken Broken Heart". If the arrangements aren't special in their own right, "Well, it's hard to get too bored/ When you pick the right two chords," as Lewis murmurs on "If Life Exists (?)", before discovering that no number of girlfriends will make him happier.
But graveyard hoedown "Whistle Past the Graveyard" almost ruins some relatively droll commentary about the afterlife with bah-ing backing vocals. Barnyard themes also sink the Pearls Before Swine in-joke on "Good Old Pig, Gone to Avalon". Eight-minute jazz-noise freakout "The Upside-Down Cross" eventually gets to lyrics about traveling with various women, but it's not worth the trip; finale "Mini-Theme = Moocher From the Future" mistakes "yesterday to no-terday" for a clever pun. So 'Em Are I is a frontloaded album. But anyone who ever bought a Sebadoh record despite really liking only Lou Barlow's songs should still consider checking it out. (You can prefer Eric Gaffney's songs, that's okay, but not me.)
