When we started this project, we were looking to find out what happened if we took artists we loved on record or on stage, and find out whether they would sound better, worse or different when taken out of their natural live or recorded habitat. Anti-folk hero Jeff Lewis – predictably – managed somehow to sound incredible with no instruments at all, just sitting alone on a giant novelty chessboard next to a building site.
This session almost never happened. Since Jeffrey had come straight from a festival appearance, and there had been some issues with – in no particular order – guitar tuners, parking, stage times, sound engineers and a second-hand bass amp, by the time we’d all got set up we were pretty confused. But, as we’ve come to learn, the unplanned often throws up the unexpected – and so we ended up on the giant chess set on Edinburgh’s Cowgate, sited precisely where the dressing-room to the old, long burnt-down and much-loved La Belle Angele venue used to stand.
For openers, Jeffrey took us back to an oldie – ‘Pounds’, his whimsical and satirical mockery of the double-meaning in the Queen’s own currency. Now, we’ve loved recording all the bands we’ve featured, but watching someone take the music out of the equation and forcing you to focus on nothing but the lyrics and their delivery was a bit special. And it only got better.
Second track was a new one, at the time still only called the ‘Untitled Mosquito Rap’, it’s quite possibly the most elaborate rant against tiny insects ever devised. Seriously, the man really, REALLY hates mosquitos.
Finally, we got something really unexpected, with Jeffrey taking on The Fall’s driving, snotty ‘Wings’ from the Perverted By Language album, acapella. Even without the insistent drums, the nagging guitars, the rumbling Hacienda basslines or the youthful contempt of Mark E Smith’s original, we reckon you’re left with something just as dry, wry and fascinating as the original – three adjectives as easily applied to Jeffrey himself.
