David Malitz reviewed an October 2007 Jens Lekman performance for The Washington Post:
Jens Lekman is the latest musician to become the face of indie coolness by acting as if he has no idea what the term even means. The Swedish star took the Black Cat stage Thursday night in a garish floral shirt, smiled like a complete goofball throughout his entire set, sang songs with titles like "Friday Night at the Drive-In Bingo" and even briefly ran around the stage "flying" like an airplane.
But don't think his newfound status has anything to do with irony. If the boyish 26-year-old isn't yet a certifiable pop music genius, his inspired performance in front of an enraptured sellout crowd proved that he's at least well on his way.
Lekman croons like Morrissey and shares a fey gene with Belle and Sebastian's Stuart Murdoch, but has more in common with fellow free spirit Jonathan Richman. This is particularly true of his lyrics, which are at one second hilarious and the next touching, but always delivered with the same unflinching sincerity. "I took my sister down to the ocean/But the ocean made me feel stupid" he sang on the jubilant "The Opposite of Hallelujah," the kind of song so catchy that it should appeal to anyone with a pulse, not just MP3-blog readers.
Most songs were bouncy and buoyant, thanks to Lekman's backing band of six Nordic females who played flute, saxophone, guitar, bass, keyboard and drums, all while maintaining icy gazes. If the results didn't necessarily sound like the work of his country's most famous musical exports, Lekman's songs do have the same irresistible immediacy of Abba tunes. The few numbers he played unaccompanied lacked the sizzle of the full-band material but offered a chance for better connection with the audience.
Set closer "Pocketful of Money" took a reliably horrible gimmick -- Lekman and the audience singing a round, in unison -- and made something truly magical out of it. Even Lekman admitted it was the "most beautiful" version of that song to date and to play anything else would simply ruin the moment.
Mark Jenkins reviewed Jens Lekman's 2007 album "Night Falls Over Kortedala" for The Washington Post:
Retro Swedish crooner Jens Lekman's third album, "Night Falls Over Kortedala," opens with an earnestly romantic sentiment, heightened by his baritone and a bombastic symphonic-pop arrangement: "I swear I'll never kiss anyone/Who doesn't burn me like the sun," he rumbles on "And I Remember Every Kiss." Then it's on to "Sipping on the Sweet Nectar," which offers more talk of kisses, this time set to cheesy symphonic-disco. Lekman seems to suffer from a condition that's rare in Western Europe: irony deficiency.
Actually, there's more to "Night Falls over Kortedala" than its first two songs reveal. Lekman clearly adores over-sweetened heirloom pop, but he does have a modern sensibility. Some of his compositions are based on samples, and not all his lyrics ponder old-fashioned romance. The jaunty "A Postcard to Nina" is about posing as a lesbian's boyfriend so as to please her father, and "Shirin" brushes against a larger subject by profiling an Iraqi exile who runs an unlicensed hair salon in her Swedish apartment.
Sometimes suggesting the Magnetic Fields' Stephin Merritt, Lekman tells love stories that include asthma inhalers and trips to the emergency room. Tellingly, Kortedala is the musician's Gothenburg neighborhood; Lekman may sample Jimmy Webb and Renaldo & the Loaf, but he uses those snippets to construct an individualistic domain.
Jens Lekman is in love. Deep in it.
To be more accurate, the indie-alt troubadour with the breakfast-cereal-crisp croon is downright immersed in amour these days: the concept of it, the sensation of it — and the act of it.
During the course of his most recent album, "Night Falls Over Kortedala" (Secretly Canadian), Lekman portrays a clumsy, soft-spoken wallflower who transforms in to a vulpine swooner, yearning and chafing in his pursuit of emotional satisfaction.
Since escaping the dreary 'burbs of Gothenburg, Sweden — his hometown, but not necessarily the place he'd call "home" — he took a sabbatical from music to work at a bingo hall for less than a week. After an extended respite in Australia to clear his head of past, present and future relationships, he is now rested and longing to share his music with an affectionate crowd.
Lekman spoke with Express to discuss his much-anticipated sold-out performance at Black Cat on Wednesday and from whence he draws his inspiration.
EXPRESS: First of all, welcome back from Down Under.
LEKMAN: Thank you. Yeah, it's been both good and bad being back. It was the best thing I've ever done. I now have such a love for Australia. It was a vacation; it was like a new home; it was inspiration. I met so many people who I have nothing in common with. I felt constantly inspired. I wrote a lot there. I think there's an EP in my time spent in Australia.
EXPRESS: You seem to be as enamored of love as The Beatles were. Heck, you could probably rival Rodgers and Hammerstein, come to think of it. What drives that?
LEKMAN: Why write about love? Well, I mean, how much time do you have? I write about love because I can't see the opposite of it. I don't understand people who can't be ultra-romantics.
EXPRESS: Part of your pursuit seems to stem from an unquenchable desire to compose music at a breakneck pace. You once clocked in at writing one song a day, right?
LEKMAN: I write a lot, and I can't really stop at this point in my life. There's too much to keep writing about. A song a day is a lot, I know. But most of those songs are not full yet. I have a whole collection of them that are waiting to be made whole.
EXPRESS: What completes a song?
LEKMAN: Well, I write about things that haven't happened but that I want to happen. I write my hopes. I also write my experiences or what I hope they will be. I'm a very optimistic person. My songs are finished when I put everything I have in them, and when they have an effect on the people listening to them.
EXPRESS: So you're both prolific and a soothsayer?
LEKMAN: Take [the song] "Julie" for example. I wrote that song before I even knew her. I wrote what I thought she was; who she was to me. She embodied what I wanted to convey in my writing.
EXPRESS: It's incredible that people can live up to a song's description and impression of them. It must be intimidating to make friends with you.
LEKMAN: Growing up I was socially awkward. I still am at some times. I think writing about people or writing for people made communicating easier and seem more possible.
EXPRESS: That could complicate being in a relationship; people must feel like lyrical fodder. The songs "Into Eternity" and "I'm Leaving You Because I Don't Love You" come immediately to mind.
LEKMAN: Absolutely. This is also why I don't answer the questions, "Are you dating someone?" or "Have you found the love that you write so passionately about?" anymore.
EXPRESS: We'll make sure those questions don't come up, then.
LEKMAN: Well, it is an important subject for me, and I'm dealing with that right now — what love means in my music and in my life. I have love for friends. I have such fantastic friendships. It's what I draw from when I write, and when I sing, a song.
EXPRESS: You've got the market cornered, it seems.
LEKMAN: I don't think people are less romantic than I am, or less romantic than people used to be. I think that they just need to communicate more with each other. That's where love comes from. I see a lot of it in Americans especially. The people here are passionate.
EXPRESS: Speaking of which, your show sold out the Black Cat main stage; you've clearly got a lot of love in this city. What can the audience expect?
LEKMAN: This show will be a little bit smaller than some of my recent performances, which I much prefer. It's a perfect size now. Of course, I like playing to larger groups of people, so that more people can enjoy it. But sometimes it's harder to cope with that many all in one place, at one time. Before we were playing with a lot of extra singers and band members, as opposed to me playing with a bass player and my iPod.
EXPRESS: Do you feel like the larger crowds drown out the music?
LEKMAN: Oh, I know these are not practical complaints. And I constantly whine about things like the intricacies and frustrations that come from six years of sound checks with a clutter of people onstage. These are complaints about nothing, of course.
EXPRESS: Why not play an after hours show?
LEKMAN: That is such a good idea! I'm always in the mood to play an extra show after the big show. It's nicer to play more acoustic shows, for a few people. It creates a friendly environment. It's like I'm playing for friends.
EXPRESS: A smaller show would be great. It would also present fewer difficulties for layering samples live rather than having a band approximate them.
LEKMAN: When I started sampling, it was so exciting and it was scary. I was disappointed in how sampling was perceived and what was allowed. There was a blueprint for what you take from it and what you applied to it, and I hated that formula. It's the broadest instrument in the world, and it was hard to go outside those parameters. But during performances, the live band also gives the music a fullness that's hard to replicate.
--Christopher Correa, Express (April 2008)
