After the last whispery note of “Taken” by Trees, Victoria Bergman’s airy voice disappeared into the darkness Saturday at Boston Royale, leaving the small, intimate crowd waiting patiently for headliner Jens Lekman.
Swedish singer-songwriter and storyteller extraordinaire Jens Lekman is never one for conventional arrivals. Instead, a pianist walked onto the stage and gently pressed into the keys the simple first notes of “Every Little Hair Knows Your Name,” which is the first and only instrumental track on Lekman’s new album I Know What Love Isn’t.
The crowd stood in silence for the entire two-minute song. This silence became a deafening roar as Lekman walked out of the shadows and took the stage to launch into the deceptively upbeat and sunny “Become Someone Else’s.”
The quintessences of Lekman’s performances are the stories that precede each song. Though his very well-produced studio albums have their own clean-cut appeal, it is evident that the full potential of a Jens Lekman song can only be realized alongside the talks that accompany his live performances.
Before launching into the title track of his latest album I Know What Love Isn’t he explained how he loves telling stories so much that he called off a sham marriage with his friend for the purpose of getting an Australian citizenship just so he could be free to talk about it without legal repercussions. It appears to be the mark of a born storyteller to decide on major life choices based on whether or not it should be kept a secret.
The brilliance of the talks on this particular night were how they neatly strung together the songs into a cohesive story and acted more like transitions than like random, forced chatter. For example, he introduced “The End of the World is Bigger than Love,” by dedicating it to “anyone who’s ever had their heart broken,” which garnered some slow, knowing nods from the crowd.
After advising listeners (and probably trying to assure himself) that a “broken heart is not the end of the world,” he dedicated the next song, “Some Dandruff on Your Shoulder” to anyone who’s ever had to break someone else’s heart. Nervous laughter ensued.
The songs took a turn for the slow and sorrowful soon afterwards, when Lekman specifically requested that only blue lights be left shining for “I Want a Pair of Cowboy Boots.” Aside from the occasional nod, no one moved. Perhaps they also needed cowboy boots.
Lekman, never willing to let the blues get to him, found a way to get the crowd riled up again. “Do you want to do some dancing?” he shouted into the microphone and led the crowd in claps escalating in speed and loudness into the danceable favorites like “Sipping on The Sweet Nectar” and “An Argument with Myself.” It’s songs like this that will ensure that Lekman never gets pigeonholed into the “sad-guy-playing-guitar” group.
Also unique was the level of interaction with the audience Lekman brought into the stage. During the first encore, the band played “A Postcard to Nina,” in which Lekman encouraged his friend to not “let anyone stand in your way.”
In the second encore, Lekman was back by himself, carrying only a guitar. He proceeded to strum and hum into the most fitting song of the night “Pocketful of Money.” The hypnotic, minimalist melody put the entire crowd in a trance. Soon enough, everyone was snapping their fingers and singing along to a minute-long chorus of “I’ll come running with a heart on fire.”
In the pause that followed when Lekman sighed into the microphone one final request to be taken somewhere “where the people are pleasant/Where the music never ends,” everyone looked around the small crowd. They instantly knew that they’d come to the right place.
Lekman bid the crowd goodnight with a “little lullaby” and brought us full circle to a lyrical rendition of the first instrumental, “Every Little Hair Knows Your Name.” With haunting verses like “Every cell in this body/Has been replaced since I last saw you/but the memory is in the DNA,” the last song ensured that this show won’t be forgotten soon. It will be internalized, revisited and cherished.
