Jona Lewie sounds like everything (even Erasure)

Jona Lewie. Most people my age or of any age have no clue who he is, and those who do know him know him for one song, “You Will Always Find Me In The Kitchen At Parties”. His one or two hit wonder status obfus­cates the fact that he churned out several years worth of inspired new wave songs.

I discovered Jona the same way most others did — from “Kitchen At Parties”, but that song seemed too creat­ive and witty (with lyrics like ‘She was into French cuisine / but I ain’t no Cordon Bleu’) to be the extent of his charm. He was such an unlikely new wave pop star — 10 or 11 years older than fellow Stiffy Kirsty MacColl, and he’s not really all that much of a singer, he’s more of a talker. Not your typical Stiff star, he sings synth-heavy narra­tions on the now-ness of the late 70’s and early 80’s — an unex­cited troubadour of the lounge lizard bildung­s­ro­man. He’s kind of like the musical version of Mike The-Cool-Person from the TV show The Young Ones, a bit of an aging hipster, slightly sleazy, occa­sion­ally sacchar­ine, but always full of cheeky puns and one-liners.

(Speaking of Kirsty MacColl, she actu­ally sang back­ing vocals on “You’ll Always Find Me In The Kitchen At Parties” and appeared as one of the bored girls in a few TOTP appear­ances. They were a bit like an altern­at­ive version of the Kate Bush/Peter Gabriel mentor/protégé relationship.)

All of this sets him up to be some­thing of a comic pop star, but that doesn’t do justice to his other talents — he’s a fant­astic multi-instrumentalist, and was as early of an adop­ter of synths and drum machines as Gary Numan or anyone else at the time. In fact, his keyboard­ing skills are so dead simple that they’re devast­at­ing in the way they engage. He bangs the Polymoog like it’s a Farfisa and doesn’t apolo­gize for it. He sounds like a lot of differ­ent things, but always like himself. Cases in point:

Here’s what put him on the map. It sounds like Ian Dury, Captain Sensible, and the male/female vocal altern­a­tion resembles the future Human League.

• click to play: Jona Lewie — You’ll Always Find Me In The Kitchen At Parties

Then there’s this one, which sounds like an amaz­ing synthpop version of the 1950’s, right down to the infec­tious chant. I hear a bit of Beach Boys and Nick Lowe in there too.

• click to play: Jona Lewie — Louise

Even more shock­ing, his song “Heart of Steel” is a DEAD RINGER for the band Erasure. Yes, that Erasure — the elec­tron­ics, arrange­ment, even some of his vocal deliv­ery is a fore­tell­ing of what Vince Clarke and Andy Bell would sound like 5 years later.

• click to play: Jona Lewie — Heart of Steel

He even sounds like a mix between the Beatles and Squeeze in this song. The song title could have been a Beatles throwaway track.

• click to play: Jona Lewie — I Think I’ll Get My Hair Cut

Further expound­ing on the Beatles-esque vibe, his other widely known song, “Stop The Cavalry”, is the UK’s most unlikely Christmas hit. It sounds like some­thing from a new wave Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and was only a hit because it has a single line that states on a droll, dry manner: “Wish I was at home… for Christmas.”

• click to play: Jona Lewie — Stop The Cavalry

Jona Lewie might not have been the most seri­ous man to play a synthes­izer in late 70’s Britain, but he was one of the most fun and one of the least remembered.