adrian is rad

My 3rd concert in 4 days was Jens Lekman (“yenz lek-mahn”) at Cafe du Nord on Saturday. His name is a bit less familiar than the Mates of State and the Polyphonic Spree, but I did previously mentioned him on this blog. He recently released his first album after a couple successful EPs. This page on Secretly Canadian’s website has a bunch of (free) rare songs. It’s worth checking out if you’re curious.

Back to the show. I went with Dale and his friend Jen (also from EC at MIT). The opening bands were so-so and the band after Jens (Kelly Stolz) turned out to be not worth sticking around for, but Jens put on an enjoyable show. He played some guitar and ukulele. He had a drummer, a bass player (from the Impossible Shapes) and a cello and violin player. The latter two really added quite a bit to the songs. Jens was entertaining and his crooning voice came through really well in the mix. He had a funny habit of singing with his eyes shut. I found it a bit charming.

The judgement on the show: I’ll probably try to see him again if he’s in town. I’d recommend seeing him if you have the chance. It probably won’t change the way you view music (like, say, a Polyphonic Spree show might), but it’ll be an enjoyable show.

His music really sounds like a mix between the Magnetic Fields and maybe Belle and Sebastian, but his records are really well produced with samples of various instruments such as “Happy Birthday, Dear Friend Lisa” has this awesome latin sampled drums and later a bunch of a crowd clapping and saying “hey!”

The worst part of his set was that it was short. He said he was taking his uke out into the crowd and he would play any song by request to people personally but I didn’t see him. I would have requested “Tram #7.”