“The best lyricist working in the US today.” – Jarvis Cocker

Manhattan is Jeffrey Lewis’s seventh studio album for Rough Trade and his first since 2011’s ‘A Turn In The Dream-Songs’. His band is called Los Bolts and includes his regular players Heather Wagner (drums) and bassist Caitlin Gray (Hooray For The Riff-Raff). The album’s artwork features Jeff’s illustrations throughout.

‘Manhattan’ was mixed by John Agnello (Dinosaur Jr., Phosphorescent, War On Drugs) and recorded by Brian Speaker.

The album is both named after and directly inspired by New York City but is no regionalised curio. It’s the very specificity of the details Lewis uses to depict his characters and situations that make his songs so evocative and so emotionally rich. Lewis is both a lifelong resident and a detached observer of his hometown but ultimately it’s a simple treatment of human moments by one of our sharpest songwriting talents.

The track ‘Outta Town’ is a song that Jeff describes as “how empty life feels when you are in a relationship and that person’s not there, because you don’t remember how to have a relationship with yourself, you broke up with yourself when you started dating the other person. You have to learn how to start dating yourself all over again.”