I went into the Crane Lane to see Jeffrey Lewis last night, and now I’m here to tell you that he is a genius and you should visit his myspace page and listen to his music and then buy some of his stuff on iTunes because you can.

There were three people on stage as I stood by the door trying to hear the music, but the sound was terrible. I couldn’t make out what kind of music it was but it sounded something like Beck’s album ‘One Foot In The Grave’ crossed with some other band who I couldn’t put my finger on.

I crossed the back of the Crane Lane and tried to hear the band over the noise of the bar and the chatter of people ordering. It wasn’t really possible, so I went and talked to a friend who was sitting on the nice comfy chairs. He asked me if the music was any good and we both commented on how we couldn’t really tell because the sound was so awful.

Later, standing on the edges of the crowd and straining to hear, Jeffrey Lewis played one of his ‘movies’ - a slide show of comic panels to go along with the song he is singing which was called ‘The History of The Fall’. It was pure genius.

you won’t be able to appreciate the genius from this inferior version, but it’ll give you an idea:

This made me realise I was missing out by not being able to hear properly and I pushed my into a more central and forward position where I could actually hear the act. From this moment on I was able to truly appreciate the amazingness of Jeffrey Lewis, and wonder why I hadn’t come across him before.

There were obviously plenty of people who knew his work quite well judging by the jumping up and down and even some level of singing along with the songs that had recognisable choruses.

Due to the bad sound I had undoubtably missed some gems of stories that Jeffrey had been telling in between songs, but I did manage to make out what he said in the middle of one song - as the crowd began to clap along he stopped the song to apologise. He explained that when people begin to clap along to his songs they find it hard to do it in time and begin to think they have no rhythm, when in fact it is he who has no rhythm, so he informed the crowd that they did not have to clap along if they didn’t want to feel that way, and besides it’s quite a long song and so in the middle you might get tired of clapping and then wonder if it’s rude to stop, but at the same time he didn’t want to be one of those artists who tells the audience what to do, so they could clap if they want to but it doesn’t really bother him if they don’t.

And then he continued the song, accompanied by his keyboard player (who was also co-vocallist) and his drummmer. The keyboard may have been a toy, I’m not sure.

We got treated to another Jeff lewis ‘film’ called ‘Creeping Brain’. Here he is performing a lo-fi version of the song in Glasgow:

For his encore he played about three more songs, and for most of the encore he was joined by some Cork fan who did some actions for the songs while standing beside him. This did not freak out Jeffrey Lewis at all, although it freaked out and amused the audience in equal measures. Jeffrey Lewis invited the fan to remain on stage for ‘If You Shoot the Head you Kill the Ghoul’ to which the said fan Danced like a maniac.

If you’ve read this far then you probably know Jeffrey Lewis already, or liked the YouTube videos enough to keep reading, and so you might think that I’m a bit cool for digging out alternative music gigs in Cork, so in the interests of transparency I should admit that I was there because Sir Brian Barry told me to be there. But at least I have cooler shoes than Val.

Other highlights from the gig included the song ‘Anxiety Attack’ - check it out on YouTube (not a great video, but a great song).

When the gig was over I bought a comic and a CD - the cd included this song:

Thnk you Jeffrey lewis for an unexpected great gig, thank you Brian Barry for telling me to be there.

This review gets four stars because it’s a review of the gig and the sound in the Crane Lane was pretty bad if you weren’t right in the middle in front of the stage, but Jeffrey Lewis himself gets as many stars as I can give him.

Dublin people, be advised - he plays tonight (5th August 2008) in Dublin at Crawdaddy ( Old Harcourt Station, Harcourt Street, Dublin 2).