Jens Lekman & Bon Iver - The Scala, London - 20/5/08
5/5
By: Thomas Hannan
I get a lot from Jens Lekman. I get a lot of laughter, I get reminded of some of the happiest and saddest times of my life, I get all mushy like a big girl when I honestly really like beer and football and junk. But I don't get sincerity from him, not directly anyway. He's performing the whole time, and one would be kidding oneself to entertain anything to the contrary. His show is so meticulously planned it borders on choreographed. Usually, with the misplaced punk rock ideal firmly in mind that being 'for real' is more important than any other aspect of one's craft, this would really bother me. What's brilliant about Jens Lekman however is how fantastic he is at being unreal.
I think what helps me settle into that frame of mind is that fine support act Bon Iver spend a short while talking about their love for our headliner tonight, and the music they themselves make is achingly personal. If someone laying his soul on the line like this can enjoy the Wednesday Night Jens Lekman Show (which tonight's rendition of 'You Are The Light' is definitely the opening theme music to) as well as confessional, lamenting songwriting, then get me off'a this high horse, please - I'll walk. Expanded from the solo concerns of debut LP For Emma: Forever Ago (read Sophie Dodds' splendid summation of that record HERE), tonight Bon Iver are a three piece, each with a delicate roll to play in this charmingly ramshackle operation. Really, if one of these people f**ked up just a little bit, that's it, end of show, the trio run off weeping and retire from music.
Thankfully they're all incredible musicians and don't put one foot wrong, instead each tootsie is placed delicately in front of the other as they tiptoe along the thin line that separates deft musicians who can actually sound heartfelt from those who come across like they're giving us a recital, never thankfully wobbling in to that latter camp. After witnessing this instantly loveable spectacle, I feel in a position to give two pieces of advice to others of the singer songwriter persuasion; one, there's always room for a massive, reverberating drum sound in gentle acoustic music. Try it! Two? Just make sure your songs are better than everyone else's.
For whatever reason you play it, this music lark's all about showing off anyway, reckons I - it's the reason people get up on stages with this stuff rather than just keeping it to themselves in their bedrooms. Everyone who's ever written a diary has, in their heart, wanted someone to find it and read it. Writing and performing songs is just another way of doing that, but with it you're being more honest to yourself and your audience. Plus, it sounds prettier. It's something that applies to all music, no matter how 'for real' or holier than thou - ever witnessed a punk rocker banging on at an audience about the fall of this and the rise of the other and what should be done, brother? Ever noticed he's doing it from a stage? Exactly - it's all part of the act. So really, perhaps Jens has got it absolutely spot on. What could be more 'for real' than a performer, performing, fully acknowledging that he is performing?
Jens has got it all planned, you can see it in his twinkling eyes. And he plays off it effortlessly, expanding the narratives many of his songs are crucially structured around with lengthy spoken word introductions that do much to enhance the myriad nuances and knowing winks they contain ('Postcard To Nina' being the finest). He's incredibly funny, both to look at (a little creepy, even? Stop grinning, Jens!) and to listen to. For such a skeletal frame he's a very commanding presence who spins a yarn as well as Tom Waits ever has, boys and girls hanging on his every word, giggling both at the witty content of his monologues and falling in love a little more every time he pronounces his t's as d's.
He's aided by a full, largely female band, each selected for their glowing Scandinavian beauty no doubt, but to a woman possessive of an obvious and entrancing degree of skill on whatever instrument they set themselves to, be that a cello, trumpet, drum kit, guitar, xylophone or anything else in the Lekman arsenal. In terms of song selection, it's pretty much everything you could want, and you as an audience are an active component in each moment of it, invited to swoon to 'Black Cab', clap merrily along with 'The Opposite of Hallelujah', giggle 'til your cheeks hurt for the lost in translation japes of 'Maple Leaves' and yell 'bom-pa-bom-pa-BOM' with the best of them during 'A Sweet Summer's Night On Hammer Hill'. But for the less brash moments, a stunning, encore closing 'Shirin' for instance, you're right to just stand in silence and ponder the world and all who are in it.
OK, he does sing once sincere line tonight, in 'Into Eternity' I believe - "I have a love for this world, a kind of love that will break my heart, a kind of love that reconstructs and remodels the past..." It not only sums up what he does, but how he does it, and to an extent, why. Dwell on that line for a while and it instils every other piece of prose of his with an added weight. Who knows then, maybe Shirin, Nina, Lisa, the boy with a pig for a pet, maybe they are all real, maybe it's a fiendish, Swedish, double bluff? But I maintain that you can learn a lot about a person from what they create, even if the end product might be anything other than self referential. Brazen honesty has its place, after all, Nick Cave can sing an entire song about nothing other than the colour of PJ Harvey's hair ('Black Hair', it's on The Boatman's Call, get it) and it'll crush me. But a lack of sincerity never bothered you when listening to The Magnetic Fields, did it? What do you really want, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, all the time? You boring sod.
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