Jens Lekman was only in Sydney two months ago, playing a solo gig at The Vanguard, plus a cosy impromptu set afterwards to a group of lucky fans milling outside the venue. But here he was again, this time performing to a much larger crowd in Manning Bar at the University of Sydney. Though when the live experience is this charming and enjoyable though, one can hardly quibble about the frequency with which it comes around.
Luckily for those who may have missed these shows, there is still hope: while most musicians will claim an affinity for Australia while touring here, Lekman actually moved to Melbourne this year to escape his Swedish home, the sleepy suburb immortalised in the title of his latest offering Night Falls Over Kortedala.
Lekman takes to the stage late in the evening, a small figure dressed down in a jumper and neat slacks, his hair light and rather fluffy under the lights, looking more like a friendly accountant than an internationally acclaimed musician. Yet the crowd is vocally enthusiastic in their welcome, and he responds with the first verse of “I’m Leaving You Because I Don’t Love You”, his unaccompanied voice strong and clear.
The set draws heavily from Kortedala, his third full-length album, providing plenty of ethereal lush pop songs, ranging from the seemingly upbeat paean to loneliness “The Opposite of Hallelujah” to melancholy ballad “Shirin”. While the album, with its strings and horns and trilling flutes over samples and jaunty beats, can seem sickly sweet at times, in live performance the songs are warm and charming Lekman rotates between strumming his guitar, pressing the keys, or dancing as he sings, supported by his Swedish-Australian five piece on drums, bass, cello and violin, as well as one member in charge of sampling from a laptop onstage, providing instrumentation – trumpet, additional strings - in the absence of the real thing. Jens’ baritone, with its slight tremolo, the clipped sounds betraying his accent, may not be a powerhouse vocal but its suits his music perfectly, gentle and pleasant to the ears.
Lekman has stated on his blog what he loves about pop music is “everything that is unique and personal”. This is evident in his approach to his own music, with songs crafted around imperfect memories of conversations and events in his life, and never more ably demonstrated than in “A Postcard to Nina”, a song presented as correspondence between Jens and his German friend Nina, narrating an awkward family dinner during which Nina, a lesbian, hides behind the fiction that Jens is her boyfriend for the sake of her elderly conservative father. In performance, with the skill of a seasoned raconteur, Lekman adds a spoken prologue, and throws in new details, dramatic pauses, even the hint of different voices to draw out the tale within his song.
Such anecdotes are peppered through the whole night, not only tying the songs together, but imbuing them with additional meaning that serves both to bond Lekman with his audience, and his audience with each other as a worldwide collective of captivated fans. An older track, “Black Cab”, is introduced by way of a story about the Turkish fan who could only identify his favourite song by its two note refrain; while another story about Florentine fans disgruntled by Jens’ kind words about their hometown leads to Jens yelling “F*** Sydney!” in a deadpan voice that has the crowd giggling in knowing appreciation.
Lekman further establishes his ability to use any moment in his personal and professional life as creative material by turning Google map directions, used to guide taxi drivers from his home in Sweden to the airport (Kortedala, apparently, being akin to a labyrinth – easy to get into but hard to leave), into a song he introduces as “New Directions”. It is this personal and unique storytelling element that elevates Lekman’s songs and performance to the sublime. He attempts, and arguably succeeds, in capturing everyday experiences – love, loneliness, regrets, infatuation, grief – with a wistfulness that acknowledges the shifting impermanence of memory, and with a keen eye for observation that is almost sociological, revealing depths of in the seemingly mundane moments of life.
So it is understandable that when Lekman leaves the stage after only an hour, disappointment is evident in the murmurs of the crowd. But Lekman returns, first with his band for two more songs, including a rousing rendition of “A Sweet Summer’s Night On Hammer Hill” that culminates with band members climbing out from behind their instruments to swerve around the stage, arms outstretched in joyous dance.
Jens then comes back onstage for a three song solo encore, throwing in some more dryly amusing banter - “This is a song about a girl. You may ask, Jens, why do you write so many songs about girls? (pause) I like girls.” - followed by an interactive exercise, one more way of drawing the crowd to him. He divides them into two sections; those with “darker voices” are called to sing the chorus, while those with “lighter voices…shut up.” And yet closer “Pocketful of Money” resounds with both dark and light voices, the entire crowd eager to be included in the Jens Lekman experience, to maybe find themselves the subject of another story to be told to another crowd on another night like this in his future.
