jens lekman // nectar // 6 november 2007
(more photos [flickr])

I already slobbered all over Jens Lekman here and if none of my urgings got you to Fremont in time to get into Nectar before they put the sold out sign on the door, then my telling you that the show was aces is just going to make you feel rotten with remorse, isn’t it?

Fine. Let me just tell you that Jens seems so much more upbeat with his band of adorable young women behind him and Viktor Sjöberg running the samples than when he was singing solo at Easy Street earlier in the evening. (Not that that one wasn’t nice with its audience snapping accompaniment and his creation of a barbershop quartet with sampling pedals. This is just to say that the later one was even better). Can I also tell you that what I want more than anything is to see a cute-off between Jens Lekman and his unnamed, white-smocked crew and Sufjan Stevens and his Illinoisemakers (or Butterfly Brigade, his call) just to see if the universe could survive the joy overload? And while I’m at it, I might mention that there was a dance break, with everyone onstage careening, arms outstretched, around each other in the middle of “Sipping on the Sweet Nectar”. And why yes, he did burst into “Black Cab” right in the middle of the intro to “It Was a Strange Time in My Life”. I can only hope that you can bear to hear that the annotated version of “Postcards to Nina”, complete with anecdotes about the bus to Berlin, a falafel-craving dog, and vegetarian German food is even more charming than the recorded version. Of course, there is also the matter of the lovely and tender “A Cold Swedish Winter” and the upbeat, chorus-erasing, Chevy Chase hating cover of “You Can Call Me Al” that would just set me on the road to unseemly gushing; so maybe I’ll just stop now.

But you know who else was pretty great? Throw Me The Statue [myspace]. Maybe I’m behind the times on that one and you already knew that. If not, don’t panic yet. I’m guessing that you might still have a month or two until their multi-part harmonies, genre-bending sound, and star-shaped tambourines catapult them into next big thing territory. You’ve got from now until they get back from the West Coast leg of the Jens Lekman tour to cram by downloading a few songs from Baskervillehill.

Related posts:

1. tuesday agenda: the triumphant return of jens lekman
2. tuesday agenda : jens lekman x 2
3. in other blogs: mostly music — tullycraft, throw me the statue, stg, into the woods
4. chin up chin up at nectar
5. in other blogs: AGENDA, relevance reconsidered, dcfc snub or not, throw me the statue on a boat, victrola for sale