I bought tickets for this show all the way back in March, before I knew that I would soon be moving to Philadelphia. Thus me and Anne schlepped up to New York for a night of show-going (not to mention awesome mac and cheese before the show and rice pudding following it) to honor our will-call tickets. Although headliner JENS LEKMAN played the First Unitarian Church in Philadelphia the night before, I was happy to see him in a place that wouldn’t feel like a hundred and ten degrees. And with BEIRUT opening (they weren’t on the bill here in Philly), this promised to be a special show.
I’d been waiting patiently to see Jens perform since first hearing his brilliant singles and odds and ends compilation Oh You’re So Silent Jens last winter. Although he scared many fans by announcing a “break” from music last December, fortunately the break was short-lived, as he came back to the U.S. this summer. His last New York show was at Mercury Lounge, and since this show was sold out and very full to capacity during his set, obviously his popularity has grown by leaps and bounds since then, as more and more buzz has built around him.
So how was the show? It was a mixed bag, in all honesty. While Jens is an entertaining, charismatic and funny performer who can occasionally truly wow a crowd (like on a version of “Julie” that started out with him playing solo on a ukulele and ending with several of his bandmates playing horns in the balcony), he has the annoying (to me) habit of radically rearranging his songs in a live setting and skipping over entire verses! This is a real shame, as I think that he’s one of the finest singer-songwriters out there now, with lyrics as affecting as those of MORRISSEY, STEPHIN MERRITT or his idol JONATHAN RICHMAN, and beautiful melodies that will have you playing songs like “Black Cab” and “Pocketful of Money” over and over again.
For instance, when he played audience favorite “A Sweet Summer’s Night on Hammer Hill,” he rearranged it in such a way as to obscure its melody, though its nod to MARTHA AND THE VANDELLAS’ classic “Heatwave” is still unmistakable. When he stuck to performing the songs in a similar manner to their recorded versions, like on audience favorites “Black Cab” (which samples THE LEFT BANKE’s “I’ve Got Something on My Mind”) and new single “You are the Light,” he fared much better. However, a great version of standout “Pocketful of Money” could’ve been even better had he used the sample that the recorded version uses (BEAT HAPPENING’s “Gravedigger Blues”).
Furthermore, on show closer “Maple Leaves”, Lekman neglected several of the song’s verses, including a great one about confusing the fall (as in the season of the year) with the great band led by MARK E. SMITH. Although this a cappella rendition of “Maple Leaves” wowed the crowd, it left me a bit cold for that reason. It’s also worth mentioning that he brought out fellow Swede and Secretly Canadian labelmate FRIDA HYVONEN (whose set I missed) to translate the lyrics to a song that he wrote in Norwegian.
The addition of current indie “it” band and Pitchfork faves Beirut as openers is probably the reason this show sold out months in advance, with tickets exchanging hands on craigslist for up to $60 a pop. With that said, although Beirut’s full-length Gulag Orkestar left me a bit cold the few times that I’ve tried to listen to it, I was willing to give 20-year-old wunderkind ZACH CONDON and his eight-piece ensemble a chance in a live setting to see what all the hype was about. It turns out that Beirut is talented, mixing odd, Eastern European-flavored instrumentation with contemporary indie-rock song structures.
It’s good party music, if nothing else, and there’s obviously something going on there. Furthermore, they remind me of bands that play in Russian restaurants in Brighton Beach and Sheepshead Bay, though without the cheese factor, so they get points there from me as well. However, their biggest drawback is that one song doesn’t stand out from any other, and I can’t tell any of their songs apart! Perhaps this is from my lack of familiarity with the Eastern European music that they obviously love, and perhaps I need to spend more time with the album, but any band I truly love has to have memorable tunes on some level, and Beirut just don’t have any.
