New York, NY · antifolk · indie rock

Jeffery Lewis

1 festival played

A comic-book artist's approach to songwriting — rambling, funny, illustrated narratives that outstay their welcome on purpose, and win you over anyway.

Jeffrey Lewis is a songwriter, cartoonist and comic-book artist from New York's Lower East Side, and one of the figures most associated with the city's anti-folk scene. He began self-publishing comics in the 1990s and started releasing records around the same period, initially recorded at home on cheap equipment.

His songs run long and wordy, mixing autobiography, jokes, anxiety and history lessons, and are usually delivered in a conversational speak-sing over scrappy guitar. He is also known for his illustrated "low-budget videos" — narrated songs performed alongside hand-drawn flip-books covering subjects such as the history of communism or of punk rock — and for 12 Crass Songs, an album of acoustic reworkings of the anarcho-punk band's material.

antifolkindie rock