This came out in 2003 – or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):
If the title of Jeffrey Lewis’s latest album is true, you may need sunglasses just to listen to him. Because on the scale of cracked, this New York artist and anti-folkie is just a shade to the right of Humpty Dumpty after the swan dive.
Like his pals The Moldy Peaches — whose album covers he also designs — Lewis comes armed with just a cheap acoustic guitar, a slackerish croak and an endearingly kooky, Beckish wit. And like the Peaches, it’s all he needs. Midway between an oddball street performer and a folksinger who drank too much of the electric Kool-Aid in the catering tent, Lewis spends his 40 minutes on the unproduced It’s The Ones Who’ve Cracked That The Light Shines Through strumming away amateurishly and spewing out bizarrely inspired couplets about zombies, hippie girls, LSD, aging from four to 128, and why you shouldn’t let the record label take you out to lunch (“Every sip of soup has gotta get recouped”). If you prefer your folk with a dash of the absurd, be sure not to let Lewis slip through the cracks.
