Leading on from Morrissey’s strained singing, here’s Jeffrey Lewis! And it’s two strained words that make this track what it is. Jeffrey describes a scene of overhearing a pretty girl talking with her two gay friends about Leonard Cohen’s Chelsea Hotel No. 2, (in itself a gorgeous love song that aches, especially that last line, he is still totally in love) a song Jeffrey knows well. Seeing an opportunity to get chatting, to introduce himself, his voice breaks up and squeaks an inquisitive “Leonard Cohen?” And it’s the most beautiful croak ever. I want to cry when he says goodbye without meaning to, I laugh when the Lewis’s witty lines inevitably appear (If I was Leonard Cohen or some other song writing master/I’d know to first get the oral sex and then write the song after) and I cannot stop smiling ear to ear when he flips this story of lost love round to a happy ending. The beauty of his hopeless romanticism, that he sings a song about her that she’ll never hear and that maybe she’s doing the same about him, and maybe someone’s doing the same about you, is so overwhelmingly sweet that my usual cynicism evaporates. It’s just that ironic name that makes people think it’s a rubbish joke anti-folk song. It’s really not.
Climb Up On My Music 