Punk is dead/Punk is dead/It's just another cheap product for the consumer's head. —Crass, Jeffrey Lewis
"Antifolk," the term that some critics have been bandying about to describe Jeffrey Lewis, is a terrible turn of phrase. Lewis isn't against folk music (or folks), and there's nothing self-negating about his music, which—acoustic guitars, rambling story songs—is pretty squarely rooted in a folk tradition.
So why the modifier? On some level, it all comes back to "Punk Is Dead," which Lewis covers, along with 11 other Crass songs, on the aptly titled and totally amazing 12 Crass Songs. Genres and subcultures start as organic movements, but they get co-opted by The System, and then they suck. So after punk starts punking itself on MTV, you get postpunk; after rave becomes an embarrassing marketing gimmick for candy necklaces, you get new rave; after folk has spent 40 years being your dad's music, you get freak folk and now antifolk. And really, antifolk is, if anything, a return to traditionalism after freak folk's fast and loose tripping. Nothing anti about it.
All of which is just a preamble to this: Jeffrey Lewis is fucking awesome. Doesn't matter how you shelve him. His songs are clever and funny and genuinely felt; his voice is ragged, flat, and pinched in all the right places; he and his band are confident and capable enough to ramble and improvise without missing a beat, simultaneously sloppy and sharp.
Lewis and his band, the Jitters, played two shows in town last weekend—Saturday night opening for the Mountain Goats at Neumo's and Sunday at the Dearborn House in Wallingford. Each set was a mix of Crass covers and Lewis originals, and each set was completely different. Of the latter, Neumo's probably got the better set, including a song about meeting Will Oldham on the subway, in which Lewis asks him if it's worth being an artist, and Oldham beats him up, ties him to the subway tracks, and fucks him ("artists are pussies"); a song warning that there's no such thing as a free lunch on the record label; and a "music video" (still projections of Lewis's colored, hand-drawn comics) about how Lewis used to dress like a hippie and his friend used to dress like a punk, but how they both "don't look like much" now and, anyway, it's what you're like inside that matters. At the Dearborn House show, a benefit potluck for Hollow Earth Radio, the attendant mix of bike punks and preciously ugly sweaters (Twee.I.Y.) got a truly funny a cappella "documentary video" about the history of writing, which Lewis delivered by flipping pages in his sketch book.
Both shows got a good mix of Crass, including "Walls (Fun in the Oven)," "Punk Is Dead," "Banned from the Roxy," "Systematic Death," "End Result," and for his last song at Dearborn, the great "Do They Owe Us a Living?" which couldn't quite rouse the politely seated crowd for its call-and-response. That Crass's right-on songs ring as true today as ever is both vindicating and depressing. That Lewis's comfortable art-gallery crowd can't be bothered to sing along is just typical. 
