 Before Jens Lekman played at Emo’s in Austin, Texas at the SXSW festival yesterday, he asked the audience if they could kindly not videotape his performance (which was something everyone actually respected). Stuff like this only adds to my perception of Lekman as a lovable pretentious eccentric, such as Jonathan Richman. It’s admiring how much heart Lekman puts in everything he does, which combined with his astonishing music I guess is what makes him such an ace artist. Yesterday It was just him and an electric guitar on stage (and his nice white shirt, as seen on the superb photograph above). He started out by playing mostly songs from the new album. It was quite interesting to hear these songs accompanied by nothing but Jens and his guitar, with no loops or other instruments. Then after a few songs he started dropping in some old classics in his set, such as “A Sweet Summer's Night on Hammer Hill”, and then when he played “Black cab” it’s was so great that my neck hair literally (and I mean literally, not metaphorically) stood up on end. I love that song! I’d almost forgot how much I love it though. How silly of me. He did all the usual little skits in between some of the songs too, which is charming, but perhaps a bit grating if you’ve seen him do a similar routine more than once or twice before. All in all it was pretty damn amazing though, as always with Jens Lekman, and together with some great sets from some American rock’n’roll bands later in the evening it made the second SXSW day one of the best festival days I’ve ever experienced, truth be told. Jens Lekman – Black cab /S Labels: Jens Lekman, SXSW |
