You don’t wanna mess with this guy.Photo: Ryan Muir
Jens Lekman to New York: Drop Dead
Good vibes and positive jams abounded at Jens Lekman’s Webster Hall show Saturday — right up until 10:30, when the last stop on the Swede’s worldwide tour was cut short to accommodate fist-pumping clubbers waiting downstairs. It seems all too appropriate that the adorable singer and his adorable band would be brushed aside by dance-floor jocks, but despite his Scandinavian reserve, Lekman was the picture of suavity as he delivered deadpan yarns in between his baroque pop mini-masterpieces. He told of complimenting Florence’s many virtues while onstage there, only to be drawn into a postshow scuffle with some locals who were apparently not so proud of their hometown. And so here he tried little reverse psychology, knocking NYC’s pigeons and skyscrapers and emphatically saying, “Fuck New York. This one’s for Connecticut.” He almost, but not quite, sounded macho. —David Bevan Jens Lekman to New York: Drop Dead
