Jens Lekman at Whelan’s

Two years on from his last masterclass in Whelan’s and Jens Lekman was back to give us all a refresher course in tuneful pop hooks married with emotional honesty. It was less intimate this time around, more straight-ahead musically, which was too bad in a way because a Lekman gig can easily turn into a reverent, private concert with the right audience. Didn’t happen this time but the trademark earnest, disarming sweetness was in full force and the performance was such a generous outpouring of positive feeling it was impossible to walk away from the show with anything other than a warm sense of satisfaction.

During the last gig Jens was ruminating about his life plans and where he was going to end up, it ultimately was Melbourne and he seems to be doing well for himself there because he came back with a flock of gorgeous musician babes in tow, a dude who’s job seemed to be jumping and also pressing button on a computer once in a while, and a Daniel Johnston lookalike ultra-grump keyboard player who never once cracked a smile. He was really in to the music though so he was probably smiling on the inside.

The band wasn’t just for show though, they also had some new material in the can (finally), which was road-tested. It’s hard to say if the new stuff is as good as the pop perfection of his last album, as brand new songs sandwiched in between songs that are extremely familiar are always a bit jarring making it tough to judge them effectively. But they seemed alright, fairly typical stuff. Lyrics the same mixture of extremely frank and literal insights with touching sentiment and beautiful phrasing, compact pop hooks, upbeat tempo, etc etc etc. Good, in other words.

Jens seems to live with literally no armour surrounding his heart whatsoever, completely resigned to the fact that it’s constantly exposed and will constantly get broken. But he’s also so enthused of the world and of emotions and everything around him he almost wants that to happen, to experience the full breadth of feeling possible. His whole existence is filtered through the lens of his heart and the music is a direct, almost literally reflection of this, which is what we were treated to tonight. The overriding image of the gig: Jens staring out wide-eyed into the audience, head tilted slightly upwards with a serene smile on his face. it was a great performance by a unique performer.

By Marcus O’Sullivan

post script

Special mention has to go out to the total unfunniness of the audience shoutouts this time around, and their general drunkenness. There were quite a few attempts to communicate with the audience but they always amounted to nothing because of the idiots, which was sad. Dammit guys, this isn’t what Jens would have wanted! He probably drinks sensibly and thinks you’re gross, because when he does drink too much he runs of with a girl to a night-cloaked dewy field, and has a great time, but realizes the girl will never see him as more than a friend, so he abruptly runs off and then he makes the long walks back to his house along the pier which is two hours away and watches the eerily empty streets as dawn slowly breaks and views it as a metaphor for his heart. He probably writes the song the next day when he’s hungover and he specifically mentions the hangover in the song, and possibly the exact level of cleanliness of his bathroom tile he noticed while he was in there getting sick. That’s drinking the Jens Lekman way!