Born and raised New Yorker Jeffrey Lewis leads a double-life, as both a comic book artist and an indie-rock musician. Beginning with homemade cassettes in the late 90s, and moving on to touring the world and releasing “proper” albums since 2001, Jeffrey’s now 15-year career has included sharing bills and tours with the likes of The Vaselines, The Fall, Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks, Roky Erickson, The Mountain Goats, Daniel Johnston, Devo, Pulp and many other luminaries.
 
This event celebrates the October 30th release of his newest album, Manhattan and is preceded by a free gallery show (rsvp required) here at LPR celebrating his visual output over the years. (Details on “Landfill Indie” here)
 
Made with John Agnello (Dinosaur Jr., Phosphorescent, War On Drugs) and Brian Speaker, Manhattan is both named after and directly inspired by New York City, but is no regionalized curio. It’s the very specificity of the details Lewis uses to depict his characters and situations that make his songs so evocative, and emotionally rich; Jarvis Cocker has described him as “the best lyricist working in the US today”. While we may not have grown up five blocks away from where we now reside in the Lower East Side, like Lewis does, we’ve all encountered our own “Scowling Crackhead Ian”, stoop-loitering or not; we’ve all had a sad, aimless breakup conversation like Lewis’s in “Manhattan,” even if ours didn’t take us over the Williamsburg Bridge, through a graffitied train-yard, and across a crowded skate park on Avenue A.
 
Jeffery Lewis official site
Jeffrey Lewis on Facebook
Jeffrey Lewis on Bandcamp