Jeffrey Lewis & The Voltage + David Cronenberg’s Wife
The Crescent, York

IN a workingmen’s club turned community venue in Old York, indie kids young and old are out in force to see Jeffrey Lewis: New York’s finest, and possibly only, comic-book artist, perma-touring troubadour, DIY garage-rock musician, and anti-folk songwriter.

What is anti-folk? Tom, singer in support band David Cronenberg’s Wife, is on-hand to explain: ”It’s acoustic punk, of course, and it’s about things that are true to life. Like this next song, which is about when I met a mermaid.”

David Cronenberg’s Wife are amazing. Think The Fall meets Styloroc era Pulp, with songs that are short stories of despair, self-disgust, and stupidity. The best of these, Sweden, has a jarring and unsettling energy that transcends this space and gently appals the young lads at the front waiting to see the headliner. 

As the roaring trade at the merch stall attests, this is a pretty popular gig for a Monday night in sleepy tourist York. Lewis has been around for many years and written many brilliant songs, but his style is so niche and his subject matter so starkly honest and anxiety-ridden your correspondent was pleasantly surprised by the sheer love on display. Perhaps the algorithms, so often drivers of a cynical narrowing of possibility, have found Jeffrey the people who need him.

The kids are here to dance to uptempo bangers about depression and despair (“Depression! Despair!”), or great artists no-one ever finds out about (“Exactly What Nobody Wanted”). And the older fans are here to cry along to bouncing tales of long-distance bus journeys (“Roll Bus Roll”) or laugh about that time Lewis absolutely failed to get laid at the Chelsea Hotel, but wrote a song about it anyway. 

The Voltage, Lewis’s touring band, are noticeably tighter than on previous visits, Mallory Fueur adding inscrutable cool and occasional fiddle, and bassist Kait Pelkey keeping everything together. 

The gig is interspersed with a capella takes on some older classics, with comic book projector accompaniment. At one stage, the screen escapes its masking tape, and our hero has to go and stick it back up mid-song. Such is the glamour of DIY art. 

It’s all magnificent, though, as Lewis is as compelling an artist as he is songwriter: seeing both operate in unison is an absolute, ramshackle treat.

Whether about your girlfriend falling asleep mid-movie or a giant brain murdering millions, these songs are all true, even when they’re obviously not. 

So maybe that’s the secret of anti-folk. And, to quote one of Lewis’s older songs: it’s hard to get too bored when you pick the right two chords.

On tour in Britain until September 13. For more information see: thejeffreylewissite.com.