Review | Jeffrey Lewis and The Voltage at The Loft, Southsea: "A biting wit and a sense of fatalism"

Singing while crouched on the floor next to his laptop, while the rest of the band bash out a steady groove he delivers a power-point presentation using his own artwork about 20th century Vietnam – it is positively Reithian in its dedication to both educate and entertain. Not often you can say that about a punk-rock gig.

Lewis emerged from the New York-based anti-folk scene of the late ’90s and has weaved his own idiosyncratic path ever since building a bewildering discography including numerous collaborations and full-album tributes to his favourite artists, he is also a comic book artist.

Embracing both folk and punk in his output, his live show is a reflection of that. Lewis opens solo, just him and his acoustic guitar, with Life, a typically wry look at what we’re all doing here, before gradually being joined by the rest of the band.

End Results, from his tribute to the UK anarcho-punk collective Crass, goes down well, as does the painfully funny Sometimes Life Hits You, before his tour de force – another “special presentation”: A history of the development of punk on the Lower East Side of New York, 1950-1975, which does what it says on the tin – it’s a musical lecture of sorts, interspersed with brief extracts of songs by the artists he’s singing about, from David Peel to The Velvet Underground, Patti Smith, Richard Hell and more.

Except For The Fact That It Isn’t from Bad Wiring, his sole album to date with The Voltage is a ramshackle, full-tilt rocker. Had the packed-out venue not been so insanely hot it would have likely triggered a more lively response from the melting audience.

There’s time for one more “special presentation”, but Lewis admits this one is “not a documentary”, it’s “season one, episode one” of his “lo-fi Netflix presentation”, Cannibal Monkeys – a brilliantly deranged concept which alternates acoustic verses and thrashed choruses.

There is a biting wit and a sense of fatalism running through Lewis’ work, but despite it all there is a hint of optimism, as in the glorious shrug of closer: I Guess It Could Be Worse.

Rarely is acknowledging the bleakness of our existence so much fun.