Jeffrey Lewis & The Voltage

One snowy February day in 1963, Bob Dylan and Suze Rotolo were photographed in New York City for the cover of "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan" LP, around the corner from Dylan's 4th Street apartment. 60 years later, lifelong 4th St resident Jeffrey Lewis had the idea to try to take the same chilly photo but with no pants on, to prove himself "even more" freewheelin' than Bob! This plan was foiled by global warming, as New York City winters no longer offer snowy street photo ops, but at least Jeffrey tried. While the album cover might be a native New Yorker's neighbourhood joke, it also serves to throw down the gauntlet to modern song-smiths, as if to point out that nobody in contemporary song-writing can quite fill Jeffrey's shoes (barefoot or not). 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 just be a Chat GPT replicant-bot.