LEWSBERG - In Your Hands LP

Highly recommended.

You really have to hand it to The Velvet Underground – there are only a handful of groups whose poorly-skilled and/or shameless imitators sound great, and VU might have the largest number of those to claim. Lewsberg are certainly one of them, taking that “Sweet Jane”/“Run Run Run” template and applying it to their music with unwavering dedication, economical-to-the-point-of-absurdity guitar solos and a great Messthetics‘ sorta “don’t care” attitude that comes across sincere, not a pose. Almost feels unfair, what with so many bands trying to write original material and sucking, whereas Lewsberg have unabashedly tapped direct from the source and hit it big.

"Three albums in, one could easily say “meet the new Lewsberg, same as the old Lewsberg”, and while they wouldn’t be wrong (just a little reductive), Lewsberg found their lane early on and continue to investigate its possibilities here. If you’re not familiar, The Velvet Underground’s “Pale Blue Eyes” is seemingly the entirety of Lewsberg’s influences, and yet they manipulate and maneuver through multiple variations of that sound in a way that I find deeply satisfying." - YGR