The EVEN MORE Freewheelin’ Jeffrey Lewis
01) Do What Comes Natural
02) Movie Date
03) DCB & ARS
04) Sometimes Life Hits You VIDEO
05) Tylenol PM
06) Just Fun VIDEO
07) Relaxation VIDEO
08) Inger
09) 100 Good Things
10) The Endless Unknown
“Nobody else does it quite like Jeffrey Lewis and he bares it all and remains in top form here. Jeffrey Lewis is a national treasure, but more specifically a New York treasure with a one-of-a-kind point of view that is extremely observational, often funny and surreal, and always deeply empathetic… The EVEN MORE Freewheelin’ Jeffrey Lewis is another gem in a nearly 30 year discography and is packed with memorable songs highlighted, as always, by his words. His are the kind of songs you stop what you’re doing and hang on every line to see where it’s going..I could go for paragraphs quoting lyrics from this album…I’m very glad Jeffrey Lewis continues to get out of bed and make records like this.” – Brooklyn Vegan (Indie Basement)
“Lewis remains a vividly funny observer and masterful storyteller, and his work remains relatable and relevant.” – AllMusic (4 stars/Editor’s Choice)
“Lewis’ lyrics are the main draw, razor sharp and humorous but laced with empathy….The words are so good that it’s tempting to turn this record review into an English paper and ignore the music entirely, but that would be a mistake…The world has been short on both laughs and kindness lately, and Jeffrey Lewis somehow brings both into sharp focus on this boisterous album. It’s got the songs that make you chuckle at human frailty, but without a shred of meanness. It’s clever in a soulful way that illuminates what we all have in common as we fumble on, making idiots of ourselves, stark naked (or as good as it) in the street.” – Aquarium Drunkard
“What I count as the 14th long player by an East Village lifer set to turn 50 in November is also the best or damn close to it” (A MINUS) – Robert Christgau, Consumer Guide
“Seems like the perfect time for a new Jeffrey Lewis album, particularly one with this new single/video that reminds us all that we can’t escape shit hitting the fan, no matter how hard we try. The tune is set up with this springing piano bouncing in the background, giving the strum a bit of a punch, all the while Lewis plays with his creative storytelling. It all culminates in the sing-along moment of ‘Ow, fuck, that hurt,’ which is now required to be sung at full blast when you attend a Jeffrey Lewis show in the near future…As I listen through the latest single {“Just Fun”} from Jeffrey Lewis, I admire his craft more and more, relishing in the quick wordplay that he works into his latest little pop opus. He covers adulthood here, and whether he’s discussing the hardships, the ultimate settling here is a reminder that the bare essentials of life’s joys can be whittled down to just finding the fun. The songwriting is simplistic, in a sense (obviously I couldn’t pull it off), so you get to look into the great lines he’s put together…Lewis’ style has this warming simplicity; it’s mostly operating with a heavy strum and a light tambourine jangle. His lyricism and distinctive delivery are on full display, with the lyrics rushing through to match the formatting of the video’s lyrical work.” – Austin Town Hall
“Even if the lyrics to Jeffrey Lewis’ new song, ‘Just Fun,’ are pretty bleak, it is actually fun to see Lewis scamper giddily through the freezing streets of New York while he’s completely naked at the end of the music video. That’s the contradiction that’s always been at the heart of Lewis’ music: It might not make you feel good, but it always makes you feel seen, in ways both comforting and uncomfortable.” – The A.V. Club
“The album’s first single is ‘Sometimes Life Hits You,’ which is a very Jeffrey Lewis song, empathetic, funny, and cathartic with its chorus of ‘Fuck, That Hurt!’…In addition to making terrific music, Jeffrey Lewis is also an accomplished comic artist and both sides meet on his new ‘Relaxation’ video.” – Brooklyn Vegan
“The funniest song of the year I’ve heard {is} called ‘Tylenol PM’…a song themed around a man who gets by in this crazy world by taking Tylenol PM… it’s from Jeffrey Lewis, I love this record, he’s a man of many words, full of observations.” – Bob Boilen’s My Tiny Morning Show
“For twenty years now, Lewis has been eloquent, crass, romantic, and realistic; frequently all in the same song. When he writes a congressional lyric, he exposes more than a well turned ankle, not bothering with artful metaphors… Lewis’ new album is called The EVEN MORE Freewheelin’ Jeffrey Lewis, the title and cover photo a nod to Bob Dylan’s early New York City folkie days. A dedicated New Yorker himself, Lewis gets louder and more lowdown on this album’s centerpiece, a great song about just how painful daily existence can be called ‘Sometimes Life Hits You’…this is the musical equivalent of hitting your thumb with a hammer, and on the less radio-friendly version of that song, Lewis inserts a pungent four letter curse between the words ‘Ow!’ and ‘That Hurts!” – NPR/WHYY’s Fresh Air
“Jeffrey Lewis’ upcoming album might have the best name and cover art I’ve seen in quite some time: I laughed out loud upon seeing the text The EVEN MORE Freewheelin’ Jeffrey Lewis atop a re-staging of Bob Dylan’s famous record of a similar name—except Lewis, who is EVEN MORE freewheelin’ than Dylan, is ass naked. It’s a perfect fit for the cult favorite, who has made a career off of sharp witticisms, ‘anti-singing,’ and painfully relatable lyrics. The album’s first single, ‘Sometimes Life Hits You,’ covers all those bases and more, all amp feedback and anti-folk blues and a yelled refrain of ‘Ow, fuck, that hurt!’ that somehow manages to strike the perfect balance of silly and deeply cathartic. The song was a favorite on his post-pandemic tours, and it’s easy to see why; my parents called me on their way home from his show at Tallahassee’s The Bark last year and laughed about how they screamed along to that refrain. And as true as the song is for life in general, I can’t think of a more apt song for the current political moment, considering that every time I open Twitter (sorry Musk, it’s still Twitter to me) I instantly feel as if I’ve been backhanded across the face, then backhanded across the face again. ‘You can quote from philosophers, or Bibles or songs / That find hope in the hopeless and find right in the wrongs,’ Lewis speaks-sings. ‘You can wear art and wisdom like a bulletproof vest / But sometimes life’ll hit you like a hammer to the chest, then you’ll say: OW! Fuck, that hurt!’” – Paste (Best New Songs)
“What makes The Even MORE Freewheelin’ Jeffrey Lewis (and, really, all of Lewis’ discography) so magnetic: he somehow verbalizes the inarticulable. While his lyrics are typically highly specific to his own life… he’s an expert at using specificity as a portal to universality—to get at these ineffable, broadly familiar feelings by couching them in the particulars of his own experience…don’t mistake the stripped-down sound for simplicity. Lewis’s lyrics remain as sharp and incisive as ever, tackling themes of existential dread, the struggles of daily life and the constant battle against inertia.” – Paste
“This latest album shows Lewis at his best…This folk-rock music mostly rambles along, a bit ramshackle and casual, often disguising the carefully crafted lyrical content. Lewis’ take on life and love leans more toward the regular than the Romantic; his observations are as relaxed as they are funny, with no loss of insight…The EVEN MORE Freewheelin’ Jeffrey Lewis is a particularly wordy album, but Lewis pulls it off. He has plenty to say, but his distinctive outlook remains intriguing and often provocative. He goes to dark places; oblivion never seems far off, but he finds gratitude in a hundred ways. It all makes for a complex work that gets to the heart of Lewis’ art and maybe even his self.” – PopMatters
“Lewis is the kind of Lower East Side weirdo they don’t make anymore. A comic book artist and not-quite folk singer who just exudes pre-gentrification downtown Manhattanness, he turns 50 this year, and he always seems to be releasing a new collection of comically depressed (or depressedly comic) new songs. Highlights on his latest album, The EVEN MORE Freewheelin’ Jeffrey Lewis, include an ode to his favorite drug (Tylenol PM), “Movie Date” (about how his sweetie always falls asleep before the film ends), a song that imagines the late poet/songwriter David Berman going on a crime spree with the writer Amy Rose Spiegel (don’t ask me to explain), and the new classic “Sometimes Life Hits You” (“And you say ‘Ow! Fuck! That hurts!’”). If I was a yell-requests kind of guy (ugh, what kind of life would that be?), I’d be calling out for “Do You Know Who I Am?! I’m %$&*?in’ Snooki!!,” recorded a decade ago with his spiritual godfather, the original anti-folkie Peter Stampfel. I’m not sure if it’s even online anywhere anymore.” – Racket MN
“You could follow the crowd and watch Timothée Chalamet’s Hollywood simulacrum of the original freewheeler: or you can get your smart and funny folk-rock on with The EVEN MORE Freewheelin’ Jeffrey Lewis (Don Giovvani). A relentless force of low-expectations sublimity for decades in tunes like ‘The Last Time I Did Acid I Went Insane,’ East Village antifolk fixture Jeffrey Lewis contemplates his relatable self-contradictions in motormouth tunes like the droning existential anthem ‘Do What Comes Natural’ and ‘Sometimes Life Hits You,’ a chooglin’ party song about death. ‘Tylenol PM’ pairs heartbreak with woozy backward guitar, and ‘100 Good Things’ acknowledges a life well lived despite, you know, everything.” – Relix
“… lovers of Jonathan Richman and Euros Childs should not think twice before investigating.” – MOJO (****)
“As ever, Lewis’s lyrics are standout, by turns poignant, funny and nihilistic…” – UNCUT
“…includes some typically excellent (and poignant) reflections on human existence.” – Record Collector
“It’s time he was recognised as one of the best lyricists of his generation… All things being fair, it should go down as one of the best albums of his career.” – KLOF Mag
“If you thought 2019’s Bad Wiring was an unimprovable high-watermark of the Jeffrey Lewis 20-year discography, prepare to be shook all over again. The range of moods, situations, wordplay and styles here is effortlessly breath-taking, and if you aren’t transported on ten different emotional rollercoasters by the ten songs on this album then you might not be human.” – Louder Than War
“It all adds up to one of Jeffrey Lewis’ finest albums – which, considering the size of his back catalogue, is some achievement.” – MusicOMH ****
“As its title suggests, this record contains much puckish brilliance from Lewis, a lifelong 4th St resident.” – Hot Press 9/10
“… darkly comedic existential masterpiece.” – Far Out **** ½
“Jeffrey Lewis is more Freewheelin’ than ever on this latest record – making you laugh, cry and feel every other emotion, often in the space of just two lines.” – Spectral Nights
“…ten top notch compositions that highlight all his best traits.” – Silent Radio
“The EVEN MORE Freewheelin’ Jeffrey Lewis is a journal of discovery leavened with humour and pathos.” – For Folk Sake
“Beneath the simple, often pretty rough, instrumentation and his voice like ‘sand and glue’, there are always great songs scattered across his albums and EVEN MORE is no exception.” – NARC
“…it deserves to be heard because it is great!” God Is In The TV
“Jeffrey Lewis specializes in a unique and, quite frankly, brilliant form of indie rock that also picks the best elements from folk music. […] Are we overselling him, you ask? Not in the slightest! Jeffrey Lewis is one of a kind—criminally overlooked by the majority but deeply loved by the minority. And wouldn’t you agree you belong to the latter? Thought so, music connoisseur!” – Billeto, Denmark