Photos by Sydney photographer Daniel Boud
I dropped by the Hopetoun to see Swedish crooner Jens Lekman last night. He was wonderful, a man and his uke singing sentimental love songs. Songs about falling out of love with his girl during anti-Bush riots in his home town of Göteborg, about cutting off the end of his finger, about a joke he can’t remember the punchline for. Sweet little ditties sung with passion and good humour, mainly just him and his ukelele but sometimes with his cute little bass player and computer backing track. For one tune he stepped away from the stage onto the foldback speaker, singing and playing with no amplification to a silently transfixed packed out Hopetoun. For another he got a couple of girls from the audience to do percussion.
Sublime pop sung with conviction and charisma. Some pictures.
is that a small small guitar or a big BIG man?
how great was this show?
plain lovely is what.
damn son, you and me are at all the same places lately.
Lovely indeed. I saw you two days later at The Rogers Sisters too. Great minds think alike.
Hey I just stumbled across a live mp3 of Jens Lekman from Radio National’s The Deep End after following a string of podcasting links from the abc and sbs. That show’s hosted by Vicki Kerrigan (did she used to be on triplej? Is Radio National where triplej presenters go when they get too old for the youth network?)
Cool, i’ll have a listen to that. RN or ABC local radio is where triple j DJ’s go to pasture. Angela Catterns is probably the most successful to make the leap. And is now earning megabucks from leaving 702 to go to the DMG network.