Jens Lekman
w/the Golden Republic, Impossible Shapes Tues March 1, Crocodile, 9 pm, $7.
Although it might be a difficult matter for some people to wrap their heads around, the ideas of being both pop music-obsessed and a discerning music fan aren’t always mutually exclusive. Like many other self-conscious music lovers before me, I’ve suffered a great deal of self-flagellation over my affection for perfect, pristine pop songs–never totally comprehending the joys hard-core record collectors are supposed to find in tuneless walls of noise and jazz music. In recent years, however, I’ve sort of resolved myself to my fate–finally stomaching the fact that my purgatory will largely be one of string arrangements and perfect harmony–but all is not necessarily lost in my pursuit of erudite snobbery. And I have artists like Jens Lekman to thank for it.
At 23, Lekman is a bona fide pop star in his homeland of Sweden–a nation that knows a thing or two about cloyingly perfect pop music–where he recently scored a number two hit on the Swedish pop charts, and picked up three Swedish Grammy nominations. Here in the States, Lekman is a slightly less familiar name–recently releasing his stateside debut, When I Said I Wanted to Be Your Dog, on Indiana indie label Secretly Canadian to decidedly less acclaim. Clearly a card-carrying pop-music obsessive, Lekman culls his songwriting palette from only the finest of sources–a well that includes the likes of Burt Bacharach, Momus, Stephin Merritt, and (a lot of) Jonathan Richman, and that’s without even scratching the surface. Fusing baroque affectations, a syrupy AM radio baritone, and, appropriately, the occasional well-placed string sample, Lekman’s music is something of an experiment in impeccable pop taste–a thoughtful, charmingly lighthearted songwriter of impressive intention. Sure, his lyrics–borrowing Richman’s sense of goof, minus the loveably wide-eyed naiveté–can get a little cloying, but you’ve really got to hand it to a guy who can make name-checking Warren G’s Regulate sound perfectly nostalgic without so much as a hint of irony. And I’ve got to hand it to Lekman’s arching, artful vision–if only for its further justification of my pop-loving snobbery.