Yup, the brothers gonna folk you up. Anti-folk that is: Jeffrey and Jack’s garage troubador aesthetic topped off with smarter-than-your-average-bear lyrics and delivery courtesy of our old friends Arch and Knowing. If irony is dead, nobody invited these Lower East Siders to the wake.
So, here are songs of ordinary madness and indie-boy caniptions. Songs like ‘Posters’ or ‘Something Good’ or ‘They Always Knew’, shot through with a gratifyingly frazzled and fuzzed guitar sound last heard on ‘Pictures Of Matchstick Men.’ Songs like the witty little ditty ‘Don’t Be Upset’, about a young man taking his ladypained girlfriend to the aquarium (“My baby freaked when she peeked at that 8-legged blob with a beak”), prettified by scrapey violin courtesy of Holy Modal Rounder Peter Stampfel. Songs about chance encounters with Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billie that spin off into lengthy and convoluted existential enquiries (‘Williamsburg Will Oldham Horror’), or ‘Time Machine’, a cute Nuggets pastiche, that, with amps turned up to 11, could be The Hives with a PhD.
At its best (the noisenik blow-out of ‘Artland’,) City & Eastern Songs is smart stuff – tales of modern urban alienation and college dropout jitters set to minimal arrangements. At worst it’s a nerdy in-joke invented by basement record shop snobs stuffing the void in their lives with retro references and esoteric pop trivia, the musical equivalent of David O Russell’s toe-curling I Heart Huckabees.
Make no mistake, this is a very clever collection of tunes, but frequently the bellybutton fluff excavation, brain droppings analysis and idle angst (“What if I get cancer and I ain’t got no insurance” – ‘Anxiety Attack’) try the patience. It’s a thin line between Magnetic Fields and They Might Be Giants. As Tyler said to Jack: “You’re very clever. How’s that working out for you? Being clever.”