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Concert Mon Mar 24 2008
Oh, Jens...
What is it with these young men and their fascination with the past, what with their string ensembles and fedoras and their melodramatic lyrics? And how is it that they’re helping to influence an entire indie-pop aesthetic?
Jens Lekman is one such young man, a singer-songwriter driven by a seemingly unquenchable thirst to churn out EP after EP. Hailing originally from Gothenburg, Sweden, Lekman manages to stride that fine line between old and new. He’s not wackadoo enough to earn the “what on Earth is in that Scandinavian water?” nod that’s used to explain the likes of Björk and Sigur Ros. But from the onset of his first full-length release, 2004’s When I Said I Wanted to Be Your Dog, Lekman has skipped happily from genre to genre, all while maintaining a decidedly old-fashioned feel.
His latest album, 2007’s Night Falls Over Kortedala, finds Lekman experimenting less but sounding far more self-assured. “And I Remember Every Kiss” opens with the swell of strings and timpani to a big, boffo, Hollywood climax (with sampled strings from legendary violinist Enoch Light), while Lekman himself makes an equally grand statement: “And I would never kiss anyone/ Who doesn’t burn me like the sun/ And I remember every kiss like my first kiss.”
But such a sweeping, your-beauty-blots-out-the-sun declaration is not really Lekman’s speed. He’s much more of a homebody. As every good boyfriend knows, it’s the little things that count in a relationship; noticing the tiny details about your sweetheart is a sure way to up the twitterpation. Case in point is the love ballad “Your Arms Around Me.” In it, Lekman accidentally slices off the tip of his finger while cutting an avocado; his girlfriend wraps his hand in toilet paper and takes him to the emergency room. That’s all. But somehow, in Lekman’s from-the-heart storytelling, it’s absolutely enough.
Jens Lekman and the Honeydrips
Monday, March 31, at the Logan Square Auditorium
