Jens Lekman Interview (9.11.07) and Show Review

As promised, I have uploaded the interview with Jens here for your downloading pleasure.

The sound quality isn't the best, we were in a tiny backstage room that was quite echo-y. But it's still awesome! Listen to me as I nerdily mention Beirut for no reason!

Before I talk about the show, I want to say a little about what happened before it (which was a lot, I spent a total of 7 hours in Bimbo's on Friday). When I got to Bimbo's at 5 pm as instructed, there was no one there and it was locked. I called Jens tour manager and no one responded. I waited about a minute more outside (just slightly freaking out) before two vans pulled up. Jens was in the passenger seat of the second one.

I was quickly introduced to him by his tour manager and then this happened.

Jens: "Hi..... can you carry that guitar in for me?"
Me: "Okay, sure!"
My mind: "OMFG JENS LEKMAN JUST ASKED ME TO CARRY HIS GUITAR!!!!1!!11"

So that was pretty surreal to start out with. I passed the next two hours until the interview actually happened sitting around in the basically empty Bimbo's watching people setting up equipment and listening to them speak in Swedish. Sound check was pretty sweet as my mom and I were the only people in the room other than the sound guy.

So. The show. The opening band, Throw Me The Statue, were overall pretty good. The first few songs were a little too slow and made me kind of tired, but the middle few songs were pretty damn awesome. They reminded me of a strange mixture of Voxtrot and Grizzly Bear. But maybe I'm completely wrong, you can go listen to their music and decide for yourself! One thing that was pretty sweet was that they gave about 20 people in the audience little egg shaped shakers for one song (these came in useful later).

After the break, Jens sample and computer handling guy (and the only male in his band) came on stage and started playing music. This was very confusing. He was playing songs by The Tough Alliance, all of which Jens uses samples from. We didn't really know whether the show was starting or not. Thankfully, after about ten minutes of this, Jens and his incredibly adorable all female band came on. They were all wearing matching white outfits, which all had different things embroidered on them (the bicycle was my favorite). I struggle to describe the awesomeness that ensued. The sample guy played the backing samples, but with the viola, violin, trumpet, sax, bass, drums and guitar on top of them, the songs sounded even more crazy and beautiful than on the album. His voice was much more impressive and perfect sounding. The songs that were preformed solo (such as "Shirin") were very gorgeous and completely different than the album versions. Overall it was an awesome brightly colored disco-ball-spotted Swedish dance party. I doubt I have ever laughed so much at a show. "A Postcard to Nina" was completely epic. He filled in the other parts of the story between verses.

"Then her father said to me 'Jens. I found you on the internet. You have a beautiful voice.' Then dinner got very awkward. It was like that scene from Buffalo 66. But in Germany. "

The crowd was really enthusiastic and thanks to that we got two encores of solo songs, including "Pocketful of Money". Someone started using their shaker from earlier. Jens said "Oh, someone has a shaker!" When 20 other people joined them, the expression on his face was pretty memorable.